Why They Left

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Summary

Security forces arrested Rebin Rahmani on November 19, 2006,
in Kermanshah, the capital of the western Iranian province of the same name. He
had been researching the prevalence of drug addiction and HIV infections in Iran’s
Kurdish-majority areas. Rahmani spent two months in detention facilities run by
the Intelligence Ministry, and was interrogated by intelligence agents in both
Kermanshah and Sanandaj, the main city in the adjacent Iranian province of
Kurdistan. During his time in detention, he was subjected to several rounds of
interrogation accompanied by physical and psychological torture. In January
2007, a revolutionary court sentenced Rahmani to five years in prison on charges
of “acting against national security” and “propaganda against
the state.” The sentence was handed down after a 15-minute trial during
which Rahmani had no access to a lawyer.

Upon his release from
prison in the latter part 2008, Rahmani learned that he had been dismissed from
university and could no longer continue his education. He became active with a
local rights group, but was forced to leave the country in 2011 and apply for
refugee status in Iraqi Kurdistan due to mounting pressure against him and his
family.

Rahmani is one of scores of journalists, bloggers, human rights activists, and
lawyers who have fled Iran since the government embarked on a major campaign of
repression following the widespread popular demonstrations against alleged vote-rigging
in the June 2009 presidential election, which handed a second term of office to
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government’s repression has involved a
range of serious and intensifying human rights violations that include
extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, and
widespread infringements of Iranians’ rights to freedom of assembly and
expression.

This report gathers evidence of this campaign of repression
from some of its principal victims: Iranian civil society activists. Because
Human Rights Watch is unable to work in Iran, most of documentation presented
in the report is based on interviews with activists like Rahmani who fled the
country to seek refugee status in neighboring Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan
following the 2009 post-election crackdown. The report focuses on four groups:
human rights activists, journalists and bloggers, human rights lawyers, and
protesters or persons who volunteered for the presidential campaigns of
opposition members Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and were targeted by
security and intelligence forces. This report discusses why they left and some
of the challenges they face in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan as asylum seekers and
refugees.

Although most of the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets to protest
the June 2009 presidential election result had not been political or civil
society activists, they nonetheless found themselves targets of security and
intelligence forces. After public protests came to an end, the
authorities continued their relentless assault on all forms of dissent, targeting
civil society groups and activists who had little if any connection to the
protests themselves but whom they deemed to be supporters of a “velvet
revolution” working to undermine the foundations of the Islamic Republic.

Along with members of the political opposition, human rights
activists, journalists and bloggers, and rights lawyers bore the brunt of these
attacks. Security forces arrested and detained scores of activists, including
those advocating on behalf of ethnic minorities, women, and students, and subjected
many to trials that did not meet international fair trial standards. Dozens remain
in prison on charges of speech crimes such as “acting against the
national security,” “propaganda against the state,” or
“membership in illegal groups or organizations.”

In addition to the several show trials that authorities
convened before television cameras where civil society activists and members of
the opposition were indicted for attempting to bring about a “velvet
revolution,” one of several landmark events which cast a chilling shadow
over Iranian civil society in the months following the June 2009 election was
the so called “Iran Proxy” affair. In March 2010, the public
prosecutor announced they had arrested 30 or so persons involved in what the
authorities said was a plot by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to
destabilize the government. The prosecutor accused those arrested of
implementing a plot code-named “Iran Proxy” under the cover of several
local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Revolutionary courts tried,
convicted, and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences several of those arrested
on national security charged based largely on forced confessions.

The post-2009 crackdown has had a profound impact on civil
society in Iran. No truly independent rights organizations can openly operate
in the country in the current political climate. Many of the most prominent
human rights defenders and journalists are in prison or exile, and other activists
are subjected to constant harassment and arbitrary arrest. An indication of the
lengths to which the government has gone to stifle civil society and dissent is
its targeting of lawyers who have chosen to defend activists and dissidents
arrested and charged by the authorities. In recent years, the pressure on
rights lawyers defending activists has been unprecedented. Several prominent
lawyers, like Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, traveled to European countries
and stayed there after it became clear they could not go back without facing harassment,
arrest or imprisonment on politically motivated charges.

Others, like Mohammad Mostafaei and Mohammad Olyaeifard, sought
refuge abroad. Mostafaei fled Iran after authorities repeatedly summoned him
for questioning and detained his wife, father-in-law, and brother-in-law. He is
currently residing in Norway. More recently, Olyaeifard, another prominent
Iranian lawyer who represented many high profile cases before Iran’s
civil and revolutionary courts, was forced to leave the country after serving a
one year prison sentence for “propaganda against the state,” imposed
by the authorities because he spoke out against the execution of one of his
clients during interviews with international media.

The targeting of civil society began well before 2009. The
election of Ahmadinejad to his first term as president in 2005 signaled the rise
of a populist conservative force, headed by Revolutionary Guards and the
associated Basij forces (a paramilitary volunteer militia closely linked with
the Revolutionary Guards), with the blessing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
and his allies.

Under Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the attitude of the
government shifted from the cautious encouragement of NGOs that had characterized
the approach under Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, Mohamed Khatami, to one of suspicion
and open hostility. The government increasingly applied a “security
framework” in its approach to NGOs, often accusing them of being
“tools of foreign agendas.” Authorities also suppressed the work of
activists by denying permits to NGOs to operate, often refusing to provide
written explanations when rejecting applications, as required by Iranian law.

The increased pressures on civil society activists under Ahmadinejad
led some to seek refuge abroad. Since 2009, there has been a noticeable increase
in the number of civil society activists who have applied for asylum and
resettlement to third countries. According to statistics compiled by the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 44 industrialized countries that conduct
individual asylum procedures, there were 11, 537 new asylum applications from
Iranians to these 44 countries in 2009; 15,185 in 2010; and 18,128 in 2011. The
largest number of new asylum applications was lodged in neighboring Turkey,
which saw a 72 percent increase in the number of Iranian asylum seekers between
2009 and 2011.

The majority of Iranian activists fleeing persecution or the
threat of persecution registered refugee claims with the offices of UNHCR in
Turkey or Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turkish government has only been willing to
provide temporary asylum to Iranian refugees, contingent on UNHCR’s
commitment to try to resettle them in third countries. Some activists,
especially members of the Kurdish minority, have sought refuge in neighboring
Iraqi Kurdistan. Many Iranian refugees there said they did not feel fully
secure and were desperate to resettle to a third country as soon as possible.

Human Rights Watch calls on Iran to end its repression of protesters
and civil society activists. Iranian activists, government critics, and
dissidents should not face the stark choice of risking imprisonment or
abandoning their country because they chose to exercise their rights to free speech,
peaceful assembly, or association.

Human Rights Watch calls on the Kurdish Regional Government
(KRG) to protect the safety and welfare of Iranian refugees and refrain from
threats or harassment against those who continue to pursue nonviolent political
or rights activities during their time as refugees, and the Turkish government
to create conditions that will allow registered refugees and asylum seekers to
live and work comfortably while they are waiting for resettlement to a third
country. Turkey should also allow Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the Special Rapporteur on
the situation of human rights in Iran, access to the country in his official
capacity so that he may meet with Iranian refugees and document cases of rights
abuses per his mandate.

Finally, Human Rights Watch calls on countries outside the
region to speedily process claims of Iranian refugees who urgently need to
leave the region and to offer generous numbers of resettlement places for
refugees with no other options for durable asylum.

Recommendations

To the Government of Iran

Arbitrary Arrests and Treatment in Detention

Release all individuals currently deprived
of their liberty for peacefully exercising their rights to free expression,
association, and assembly;

Ensure that all persons deprived of their
liberty receive family visits, and inform families about the location and
status of their family members in detention;

Abolish the use of prolonged solitary
confinement;

Investigate and respond promptly to all
complaints of torture and ill-treatment;

Discipline or prosecute as appropriate security,
intelligence, judiciary and other officials at all levels who are responsible
for the mistreatment of detainees in custody;

Bring Section 209 of Evin Prison and other
detention facilities operated by the Ministry of Intelligence or other agencies
under the supervision of the State Prisons and Security Corrective Measures
Organization or shut it down.

Legal Reform

Amend or abolish the vague security laws
under the Islamic Penal Code, entitled Offenses against the National and
International Security of the Country (the Security Laws) and other legislation
under the Islamic Penal Code that permits the government to arbitrarily
suppress and punish individuals for peaceful political expression, in breach of
its international legal obligations, on grounds that “national
security” is being endangered, including but not limited to the following
provisions:

Article 498 of the Security Laws, which
criminalizes the establishment of any group that aims to “disrupt
national security”;

Article 500, which sets a sentence of three
months to one year of imprisonment for anyone found guilty of “in any way
advertising against the order of the Islamic Republic of Iran or advertising
for the benefit of groups or institutions against the order”;

Article 610, which designates
“gathering or colluding against the domestic or international security of
the nation or commissioning such acts” as a crime punishable from two to
five years of imprisonment;

Article 618, which criminalizes
“disrupting the order and comfort and calm of the general public or
preventing people from work” and allows for a sentence of 3 months to one
year, and up to 74 lashes;

Article 513 of the Islamic Penal Code, which
criminalizes any “insults” to any of the “Islamic
sanctities” or holy figures in Islam and carries a punishment of one to
five years, and in some instances may carry a death penalty;

Article 514, which criminalizes any
“insults” directed at the first Leader of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, or the current Leader and authorizes punishment
ranging from six months to two years in prison.

Define both “national security”
and the breaches against it in narrow terms that do not unduly infringe on
internationally guaranteed rights of free expression, association and assembly;

Excise from the Islamic Penal Code the laws
that criminalize “insults” against religious figures and government
leaders;

Change provisions in the Code of Criminal
Procedure that allow the right to counsel to be denied in the investigative
phase of pre-trial detention. The government should guarantee the right of
security detainees to meet in private with legal counsel throughout the period
of their detention and trial;

Take steps to uphold the Citizens Rights
Laws, enacted by head of Judiciary Ayatollah Shahroudi on 2004, in Iran’s
detention centers. Unlike other laws with a security caveat, the Citizens
Rights Laws are intended to be applicable in all circumstances.

To the Government of
Turkey

Allow
Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in
Iran, access to the country in his official capacity so that he may meet with
Iranian refugees and document cases of rights abuses per his mandate;

Ensure
law enforcement and other government officials treat Iranian refugees, asylum
seekers, and migrants with dignity and respect for their human rights, without
exception;

Allow
registered refugees and asylum seekers freedom of movement and choice of residence,
with restrictions only to the extent necessary on a case by case basis for
reasons such as public health and national security, and which are applied
without discrimination on the grounds of national origin;

Waive residency permit fees to registered refugees and
asylum seekers and refrain from preventing them from exiting the country if
they have been unable to pay such fees;

Allow
all registered refugees and asylum seekers to secure work permits without
additional fees and other requirements;

Provide all refugees and asylum seekers access to health
services, health insurance, and medication on at least the same basis as other
non-citizens lawfully present in the country;

To the Kurdish Regional Government

Refrain
from threatening or harassing refugees who continue peaceful political
activities against the Iranian government while in areas controlled by the KRG;

Do
not demand that Iranian refugees and asylum seekers secure guarantees or
protection from exiled Iranian political parties or Iraqi Kurdish political
parties as a condition of residence or renewal of residence permits;

Unify
residence requirements for registered refugees and asylum seekers and allow
them freedom of movement and residence in KRG territory subject only to restrictions
on a case by case basis to the extent necessary for reasons such as public
health and national security ;

To the Office of the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees

Communicate
with Iranian refugees and asylum seekers about their prospects for durable
solutions;

Closely
monitor and report on alleged attacks, threats, or intimidation by Iranian
security and intelligence against Iranian refugees and asylum seekers in
northern Iraq;

To Other Concerned Governments, including EU Member
States, Canada, Australia, and the United States

Streamline
security background checks and other regulatory checks in order to ensure
reasonable timelines for admission of refugees already accepted for
resettlement;

Recognize
that some Iranian Kurdish refugees are not able to integrate locally in
northern Iraq, and consider them for resettlement;

Consider
admitting more Iranian asylum seekers, especially those who have left Iran
because of persecution in response to their civil society or political
activities, outside the UNHCR refugee process;

Provide
student visas to Iranian refugees who have been denied entrance to universities
in Iran or prohibited from continuing their education because of their
political or social activities.

Methodology

The Iranian government does not allow NGOs such as Human
Rights Watch to enter the country to conduct independent investigations into
human rights abuses. Many individuals inside Iran are not comfortable carrying
out extended conversations on human rights issues via telephone or e-mail,
fearing they are subject to government surveillance. The government often accuses
critics, including human rights activists, of being agents of foreign states or
entities, and prosecutes them under the country’s national security laws.

For this report Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 50
Iranian refugees and asylum seekers. The overwhelming majority where
interviewed in in Turkey (April 2010) and Iraqi Kurdistan (October and November
2011). Of those interviewed, approximately 35 were election protesters,
journalists and bloggers, rights activists, and lawyers who had left Iran since
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over Iran’s presidency in June 2005, and
especially after the disputed 2009 presidential election. In the interest of
brevity and efficiency, however, Human Rights Watch selected only a few of the stories
it documented for presentation in this report. Some of the individuals
interviewed have since been resettled in third countries.

A handful of individuals whose experiences are reflected in
this report communicated with Human Rights Watch via e-mail correspondence.
Human Rights Watch has confirmed the validity of their stories by conducting
additional research, primarily via secondary sources, and identified the
information that was acquired via firsthand interviews and those which were
gathered via e-mail communications.

Their stories represent a cross-section of the experiences
of civil society activists who have been forced to leave Iran in the past few
years.

In preparing the report Human Rights Watch also relied on
previous information gathered through firsthand interviews conducted by the
organization and used in reports, press releases, and other material published
since 2005.

All of the interviews
were conducted in Persian (Farsi). Most were conducted one-on-one, although a handful
of the interviews took place in small group settings. Human Rights Watch
informed all of those interviewed that their stories and identities may be used
in reports and other material published by the organization. All agreed to the
conditions and informed Human Rights Watch that they had no problem with their
identities being reviewed. In a few cases, however, Human Rights Watch chose to
hide the identities of those interviewed due to the sensitive nature of the
issues discussed.

Human Rights Watch also met with and interviewed representatives
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and received information
from UNHCR offices in both Ankara, Turkey and Erbil, Iraq. Human Rights Watch
also communicated via e-mail correspondence with UNHCR Ankara and Erbil several
times prior to the publication of the report, provided them with an opportunity
to review sections relevant to UNHCR’s operations in Turkey and Iraqi
Kurdistan, and integrated their feedback and responses where appropriate.

Where noted, the age of interviewees corresponds to their
age at the time the interview was conducted.

I. Background

The Rise of Civil
Society in the Khatami Era

Iran’s civil society was a direct beneficiary of the
policies instituted during the reformist administration of former President
Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005). The country witnessed a dramatic rise in the
number of independent newspapers and journals, intensified activity by labor
groups and professional associations, and an increase in the number of registered
(and unregistered) NGOs, including human rights groups. This opening was
facilitated by a simultaneous rise in the number of Iranian internet users, particularly
bloggers, which allowed NGO activists to reach out to partners across the
country and abroad.[1]

Khatami’s government and his reformist allies in the
parliament and civil society soon came into conflict with forces associated
with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. These institutions, which
include the Guardian Council,the
judiciary, and influential elements within Iran’s military, security and
intelligence apparatuses, launched a fierce counter-offensive against
reformists and prominent civil society actors.[2]

Factions loyal to Supreme Leader Khamenei also introduced
greater restrictions on pro-reform newspapers and publications. The attacks on
freedom of the press were primarily led by judicial authorities like Saeed
Mortazavi, initially a judge in Tehran’s Press Court and later prosecutor
general of Tehran, who ordered the closure of dozens of newspapers and dailies.[3]
Editors of banned papers frequently applied for permits from the authorities
under a new name, continuing the cycle. Mortazavi also prosecuted journalists
and bloggers, and was later implicated in the deaths of one journalist and
several protesters following the disputed 2009 presidential election.[4]

Despite the counterattack by conservative factions, at the
end of Khatami’s presidency in 2005 there were 6,914 registered NGOs, an
unprecedented number.[5] Khatami’s
government actively promoted the development of civil society and the formation
and activities of NGOs. On July 29, 2004, as a step towards institutionalizing
NGOs and facilitating their functioning, the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI) submitted
to the government draft executive regulations regarding the establishment and
activities of NGOs. The government ratified these in July 2005.[6]

Prior
to ratification of the executive regulations, NGOs were required to secure
permits from either the Ministry of Interior or local government offices.[7]The new regulations created a three-tiered supervisory board made up of
government officials and NGO representatives to review applications for
permits.[8]

Article 1 of the regulations established councils on the
municipal, provincial, and national levels to oversee and facilitate the
formation of NGOs.[9]Members of the municipal-level councils include the mayor, a representative
from the city council, and a representative from the NGO community.[10]Members on the provincial level include the governor, a representative
from the provincial council, and an NGO representative.[11] On
the national level, the council is made up of a deputy from the Ministry of
Interior, a representative from the High Council of Provincial Representatives,
and a representative of NGOs selected by the organizations themselves.[12]
The regulations also established a process for appealing decisions by the
supervisory board when NGO applications were rejected.[13]

Among NGOs
established during the reform period were organizations dedicated to promoting civil
and human rights inside the country. The most well-known was the Center for
Human Rights Defenders, founded by Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and
several other prominent lawyers in 2002.[14]
That same year Dr. Sohrab Razzaghi, a law and political science professor at
Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran, founded the Iranian Civil
Society Organizations Training and Research Center (ICTRC) to provide capacity-building
support for civil society organizations, promote greater access to information,
and raise public awareness regarding the situation of human rights in Iran.[15]
A year later, in 2003, journalist and rights activist Emad Baghi, a prominent
writer and rights activist, launched the Association to Defend Prisoners’
Rights.[16]

During
the first year or so of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, several additional prominent
civil society and rights groups came into existence. The One Million Signatures
Campaign launched a grassroots effort to promote broad awareness on
women’s rights issues and collect signatures on petitions to reform gender-biased
laws. The Committee of Human Rights Reporters and Human Rights Activists in
Iran began their activities a year earlier in 2005.[17]

However, conservative factions were relentless in their
efforts to undermine such reforms. Forces loyal to Supreme Leader Khamenei
increased the pressure against President Khatami’s reform movement on
multiple fronts. They attempted to impeach several of his cabinet ministers.
Security forces arrested, and the judiciary tried and convicted, several
prominent reformist allies of Khatami such as former Interior Minister Abdollah
Nouri, former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, and reformist cleric Mohsen
Kadivar. When those attempts failed to intimidate the reformists, Khamanei
loyalists intervened to block the passage of pro-reform policies and
legislations.[18]

During Khatami’s second term in office, and the
conservatives gradually began to gain the ascendancy in their political
struggle with the reformists. Ahead of the 2004 parliamentary elections, the
Guardian Council disqualified an unprecedented 3,600 candidates, many of them
reformists. Approximately 87 sitting parliament members were among those
disqualified.[19]More than 100 members resigned in protest.[20] It was now clear that
the reform movement had been checked.

Targeting of Civil
Society Activists During Ahmadinejad’s First Term

The election of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad as president signaled the entry of the new populist conservative
force, voted in with the support of Revolutionary Guards and the Basijand
with the blessing of Khamenei and his allies.[21] Ahmadinejad’s cabinet members included
individuals who were believed to be responsible for serious rights abuses,
including the serial murders of dissidents in 1998, the closure of newspapers,
and attacks against NGOs.[22]

Under Ahmadinejad’s first term as president, the
attitude of the government shifted from tolerance and cautious encouragement of
NGOs and grassroots movements to suspicion and hostility. The government
increasingly applied a “security framework” to its approach to
NGOs, often accusing them of being “tools of foreign agendas.” The
councils established to approve and regulate NGOs now suppressed the work of
activists by denying permits to NGOs to operate, often refusing to provide
written explanations for rejecting applications as required by law.[23]

An example of the government’s increasingly hostile
attitude toward civil society was its crackdown against the One Million Signatures Campaign. In 2006, after
security forces attacked men and women gathered in Tehran to protest
discriminatory gender-biased laws, women’s rights activists launched a campaign
to oppose discriminatory laws that govern marriage and inheritance,
compensation for bodily injury or death, and a woman's right to pass on her
nationality to her children. Campaign members initiated a website and held
regular workshops in Tehran and other cities in order to educate the public
about legal challenges facing women and girls in the country.

Within months of the campaign’s launch, security
forces began arresting volunteers who were out in the streets collecting
signatures.[24]

Under Iranian law, the courts have the authority to decide
whether a registered organization should be closed down.[25]
In 2006, Ahmadinejad’s government introduced a draft NGO law intended to
further restrict the activities of NGOs. Although this draft has been shelved
by the parliament and not yet become law, it demonstrated the hostility of Ahmadinejad’s
government to civil society, and there is concern that the new (and more
conservative) parliament elected in February 2012 will take it up again. Organizations
affected would range from human rights, environmental, and women’s
organizations, through charities and organizations for the disabled, to
employers’ and professional associations.[26] The
bill would establish a Supreme Committee Supervising NGO Activities, chaired by
the Ministry of Interior and including representatives from the Ministry of
Intelligence, the police, the Basij, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the
Foreign Ministry, and only a single person representing NGO interests. The
committee would be able to issue and revoke all NGO registration permits and
have ultimate authority over the composition of their boards of directors.[27]

On March 15, 2007, officers from the Ministry of
Intelligence and Iran’s revolutionary courts, operating with a court
order, closed down three NGOs: the ICTRC, the Rahi Legal Center (run by rights
lawyer Shadi Sadr), and the Non-Governmental Organizations Training Center (managed
by civil society and women’s rights activist Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh). Revolutionary
courts later convicted all three on charges related to national security.[28]

In December 2008
security and intelligence officials shut down Shirin Ebadi’s Center for
the Defense of Human Rights without producing a court order. They alleged the
center was carrying out illegal activities that endangered national security.
Since the closure, the center’s members have been harassed and some convicted
and imprisoned.[29]

Crackdown on Protest and Civil Society after the
June 2009 Election

During the lead-up to the June 12, 2009 election large demonstrations
and rallies for reformist candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi led
many to believe that Ahmadinejad might be defeated. However on June
13, 2009, Iran’s Ministry of Interior announced that President
Ahmadinejad had won the election with 62.6 percent of the popular vote. In
response hundreds of thousands of Iranians filled the streets of Tehran and
other major cities to protest peacefully against what they believed to be fraudulent
election results.

Iranian authorities, initially taken by surprise, quickly
declared the protests illegal. When hundreds of thousands of Iranians continued
to take to the streets security forces responded with brute force. Anti-riot
police, aided by intelligence agents as well as plainclothes and uniformed Basij
paramilitary forces beat, arrested, and detained thousands. Excessive force,
including the use of live ammunition against unarmed and for the most part
non-violent protesters, led to the deaths of several dozen protesters between
June and December 2009.[30]

Some protesters lost their lives not in street clashes but in
detention facilities, where security forces subjected them to torture and
ill-treatment, in some cases including rape and sexual assault. At least five
detainees died due to abuses sustained at Kahrizak detention center outside of
Tehran.[31] Five
students were killed when plainclothes and uniformed security forces carried
out a nighttime raid on dorms at Tehran University on June 14, 2009.[32]

Despite widespread repression in
the weeks following the election, peaceful protest demonstrations continued.
During the fall and winter of 2009, government forces attacked peaceful
protestors in response to major demonstrations such as those held on November 4
(the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US embassy), December 7 (National
Student Day), and in conjunction with the Shia religious holiday of Ashura on
December 27. These attacks by security forces and Basij killed at least eight
and injured many more.[33]

The government also continued to harass and intimidate
activists, including individuals who worked for Mousavi or Karroubi’s
campaigns, journalists, and human rights defenders, subjecting more than 100 to
trials that were in part televised and did not meet international fair trial
standards, and convicting others solely for exercising their right to peaceful
dissent.[34]

The nature and size of the crackdown dramatically reduced
the space for civil society and independent or critical voices in Iran.
Activists, dissidents, and critics of the government faced a stark choice: risk
arrest, detention, and conviction, or leave. Many chose the latter option.
According the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number
of new Iranian asylum seekers in Turkey and several other countries has
steadily increased since the government’s ferocious response to the
post-election protest led to a new wave of emigration.[35]

II. Attacks on Civil
Society

The “Iran
Proxy” Affair and Local Rights Groups

In December 2010, the Iranian authorities started arresting
members of a Tehran-based NGO which had been monitoring human rights violations
in Iran for nearly five years. These were among the first steps in a government
operation which was to culminate in the trial of 30 or more activists for
alleged involvement in a foreign plot against Iran under the cover of human
rights activism: the so called “Iran Proxy” affair. Along with
other trials of opposition figures and alleged plotters such, the “Iran
Proxy” trial cast a chilling shadow over Iranian civil society—which
the Ahmadinejad government was already subjecting to severe repression.

The NGO in question was the Committee of Human Rights
Reporters (CHRR). The security forces arrested two CHRR members, Saeed Kalanaki
and Saeed Jalalifar, on December 1, 2009 and detained them in Evin prison. On
the evening of December 20, 2009, security forces arrested three more CHRR members,
Shiva Nazar Ahari, Koohyar Goudarzi, and Saeed Haeri when they were on a bus
about to leave Enqelab Square in Tehran for the city Qom, where they had
planned to attend the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri a prominent opponent
of the government.[36]

On January 1, 2010, the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI)
contacted Hesam Misaghi, who worked with CHRR, and several of his colleagues by
phone and summoned them for interrogation. The MOI agent informed Misaghi that a
warrant for his arrest had been issued, and threatened to raid his home if he
did not voluntarily report to the MOI office. Later that day, two other CHRR members
who had been similarly summoned to the MOI office presented themselves and were
promptly arrested.[37]

Misaghi ignored the MOI summons and went into hiding Because
of the increasingly tense security situation inside Iran (including at least
one threatening phone call from the MOI to Misaghi’s family demanding
that he turn himself in), his membership with the CHRR, his Baha’i
background, and his work on protection of Iran’s lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender community, Misaghi decided to leave the country and entered
Turkey with his colleague Sepehr Atefi in January 2010.[38]

On January 2, 2010, the security forces detained two more members
of CHRR, Parisa Kakaei and Mehrdad Rahimi, when they responded to a summons to
report to the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI) in Tehran. During their detention the
seven CHRR detainees faced severe pressure to confess falsely to having links
with the banned Mojahedin-e Khalq organization.[39]
None of the detainees were initially allowed access to lawyers or were formally
charged.

On March 2, 2010, another one of Misaghi’s colleagues,
Navid Khanjani, was arrested in Esfahan. The next day, March 3, security agents
raided the homes of Misaghi and Atefi and presented their family members with
arrest warrants indicating that the two were wanted for the crime of moharebeh,
or “enmity against God.” The punishment for this crime is death.
The individuals who arrested Khanjani informed him that they knew Misaghi and
Atefi had escaped to Turkey, and that they would do everything in their power
to bring them back to Iran.[40]

The extent of the government’s operation against NGOs
heralded by these arrests became clear on March 13, 2010, a week before the
Iranian New Year, when Tehran's Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s
Office announced that security forces had arrested 30 people they said were
involved in a CIA-funded project to destabilize the government with
“cyber warfare.” The prosecutor's office maintained that a network
of opposition groups implemented a project code-named “Iran Proxy”
under the cover of local human rights organizations, including CHRR and two
other groups:, the Center for Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), and Human Rights
Activists in Iran (HRA).[41]

Less than two weeks after the announcement by the Tehran
prosecutor’s office a member of HRA told Human Rights Watch that security
forces arrested 15 of its members and attempted to arrest 29 others. Among
those arrested was Farideh Rafiee, the sister of the group's former executive
director, Keyvan Rafiee, who currently lives outside Iran. HRA maintained that Farideh
Rafiee herself was not an HRA member.[42]

The government denounced all three groups publicly and
accused the “network” of hacking into state-owned websites; organizing
and supporting foreign opposition and terrorist groups, including the banned
Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK); conducting illegal protests; publishing false
information; and engaging in “psychological warfare” and espionage.
All three groups issued statements denying any involvement with the alleged
"Iran Proxy" project and confirmed their financial independence from
foreign governments. The Center for Defense of Human Rights, which had been
forced to close in December 2008 but maintained its website, called the attacks
a "frame job against human rights activists and civil society."[43]

The authorities provided no evidence to support their
allegations.[44] Revolutionary
courts have nonetheless tried, convicted and sentenced some of those arrested
on politically motivated national security charges in separate trials based
largely on forced confessions. Others remain out of prison on bail or are
awaiting summonses to serve their prison terms. Of the eighteen members of CHRR,
three including Shiva Nazar Ahari, Koohyar Goudarzi, and Saeed Jalalifar, recieved
lengthy prison terms and are either behind bars, or can be summoned to prison
at any time.[45] Five others
in the group left Iran for Turkey and have since been resettled in Europe (see
below for the story of Hesam Misaghi a CHRR member who fled to Turkey). A few
members of the HRA are also serving prison sentences, and at least five CDHR
members, including some of the most prominent rights lawyers in the country, have
also been arrested in recent years and are currently in prison.[46]

Minority Rights Activists

As well as clamping down on Tehran-based rights groups like
CHRR HRA, and CHRD, Ahmedinejad’s government increasingly applied a
“security framework” in its approach to NGOs working on minority
rights, accusing them, too, of being “tools of foreign agendas.”[47]
The NGO councils that had been established under the Khatami government to
promote and regulate NGOs were now tasked with suppressing the work of minority
rights activists, especially those working on Kurdish, Azeri, and Ahwazi Arab
issues, by denying permits to NGOs to operate and often refusing to provide
written explanations for rejecting applications as required by law. [48]
But even those minority rights organizations that were able to register and
obtain permits still faced harassment and worse.

The Human Rights
Organization of Kurdistan (HROK) is an example. Founded in 2005 by journalist
Sadigh Kaboudvand, the group grew to include 200 local reporters throughout the
Kurdish regions of Iran and provided timely reports in the now banned newspaper
Payam-e Mardom (Message of the People), of which Kaboudvand was the
managing director and editor. Intelligence agents arrested Kaboudvand on July
1, 2007, and took him to Ward 209 of Evin Prison, which is under Ministry of
Intelligence control and is used to detain political prisoners. They held him
without charge in solitary confinement for nearly six months.[49]

In May 2008, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced
Kaboudvand to 10 years in prison for “acting against national
security” by establishing the HROK, and another year for
"widespread propaganda against the system by disseminating news, opposing
Islamic penal laws by publicizing punishments such as stoning and executions,
and advocating on behalf of political prisoners.” In October 2008, Branch
54 of the Tehran Appeals Court upheld his sentence.[50]
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on the Iranian authorities to
unconditionally free Kaboudvand and provide him with access to urgent medical
care.[51]

Due to geographic proximity, the Iranian authorities’
sensitivity to ethnic rights issues, and cross-border cultural kinship, the
majority of the ethnic minority rights activists who fled to Turkey and Iraqi
Kurdistan[52] since
2005 are Iranian Kurds.

Women’s Rights
Activists

Since Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, the government has
also stepped up repressive measures against women’s rights organizations
and activists. Security forces and judiciary officials have routinely subjected
women’s rights activists to threats, harassment, interrogations, and
imprisonment.

In June 2006, after security forces attacked men and women
gathered in Tehran to protest discriminatory gender-based laws, women’s
rights activists launched the One Million Signatures Campaign,
a grassroots effort aimed at collecting signatures in support of a petition
opposing Iran’s gender-biased laws, including those that govern marriage
and inheritance, compensation for bodily injury or death, and a woman's right
to pass on her nationality to her children. Campaign members initiated a
website and held regular workshops in Tehran and other cities in order to
educate the public about legal challenges facing women and girls in the
country.[53]

The campaign both inspired and supported women’s
rights activists working outside of Tehran. Many began working with the
campaign or adopted its model of grassroots activism to educate the public and
promote women’s issues in their hometowns. Local Kurdish women’s
rights activists were among those who embraced the campaign’s model.

Within months of the campaign’s launch, security
forces began arresting volunteers who were out in the streets collecting
signatures. Sussan Tahmasebi, one of the campaign’s cofounders, was
charged with spreading propaganda against the state and threatening national
security after she organized a protest in support of women’s rights in
June 2006. She was tried on March 4, 2007, and sentenced to 2 years in prison,
18 months of which was suspended. Tahmasebi appealed the ruling and was freed
on bail pending the appeal, which is ongoing.[54]

On the day of her trial, women’s rights activists held
a demonstration outside of the Tehran Revolutionary Court to protest increasing
pressure on women activists. Tahmasebi left the court as security forces began
to arrest the protesters and was arrested a second time, along with 32 others,
and charged with threatening national security, assembly and collusion against
national security, and disobeying the orders of police. She was later acquitted
of these charges but continued to endure harassment by security forces, who searched
her home and subjected her to numerous interrogations. She was banned from
traveling on several occasions between December 2006 and January 2009.[55]
Tahmasebi left Iran in 2010 and is currently in the United States.

Student Activists

Iran’s universities have increasingly become targets
of government efforts to consolidate power and stifle dissent. Since 2005,
President Ahmadinejad’s administration has pursued a multi-phased
campaign to neutralize dissent at universities and “Islamicize”
higher education. This campaign, spearheaded by the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Intelligence, includes imprisoning
student activists; barring politically active students and members of
Iran’s Baha’i community from higher education; using university
disciplinary committees to monitor, suspend, or expel students; increasing the
presence on campuses of pro-government student groups affiliated with the Basij;
and restricting the activities of student groups.[56]

In 2009, the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Research
declared illegal one of Iran’s largest and most important student groups,
Tahkim-e Vahdat(the Office for Consolidating Unity).[57]
During the crackdown that followed the disputed June 2009 presidential election,
security forces attacked Tehran University and killed several students on June
14. In the months that followed authorities arrested more than 200 students,
including several high-ranking members of Tahkim. Many of these arrests took
place in November and early December 2009.[58]

As of May 2012 there were at least 32 students in prison
throughout the country as a result of their political activities or affiliation
with banned student groups, according to sources close to Tahkim.[59]
Authorities held scores of students incommunicado for weeks before prosecutors
filed charges against them and lawyers gained access to them. Many told human
rights groups that security and intelligence agents had tortured and forced
them to confess to crimes they had not committed. The Judiciary prosecuted the
students in closed trials in Iran's revolutionary courts.[60]

Many of the students in prison held leadership positions in
well-known student organizations critical of the government, including Tahkim. Majid
Tavakoli, an Amir Kabir University student, belonged to the school’s
Islamic Student Association and publicly criticized the government. In 2010 a
revolutionary court sentenced Tavakoli to eight-and-a-half years in prison on
various national security charges including “conspiring against national
security,” “propaganda against the state,” and
“insulting the Supreme Leader” and president. He is in
Tehran’s Evin prison.[61]

On December 30, 2009, authorities arrested Bahareh Hedayat,
the first secretary of the Women’s Commission of Tahkim and the first,
and so far the only, woman elected to Tahkim’s central committee. They charged
her with various national security crimes, including “propaganda against
the system,” “participating in illegal gatherings,” and
“insulting the president.” In May 2010, a revolutionary court
sentenced her to nine-and-a-half years in prison.[62]
Security forces arrested Milad Asadi, also a Tahkim central committee
member, on November 30, 2009. A judge known as Judge Moghiseh from Branch 28 of
the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced him to seven years in prison for similar
national security-related “crimes.”[63]

Hedayat is serving her sentences in Tehran’s Evin
prison, but authorities released Asadi after he and several other political
prisoners were granted a pardon by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in September 2011.

The Ahmadinejad administration also targeted other student
organizations and their members, including Advar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat
(Tahkim’s alumni group) and the Committee to Defend the Right to
Education (CDRE). Several leaders of Advar are in Evin prison, including
Ahmad Zeidabadi,Abdollah Momeni, Ali Malihi, Ali Jamali, and Hasan
Asadi Zeidabadi. Security forces arrested Zeidabadi and Momeni, the group’s
secretary-general and spokesperson respectively, in the aftermath of the
election protests in 2009. Zeidabadi, Momeni, and Malihi are each currently
serving sentences of 14 years and 11 months on various national security
charges such as “participation in illegal gatherings,” “propaganda
against the state,” and “insulting the president.”[64]

Zia Nabavi, a co-founder of CDRE, is serving a 10-year sentence
in Ahvaz’s Karun prison. Ministry of Intelligence agents arrested Nabavi
on June 15, 2009, and prosecutors charged him with various national security
related crimes, including links to and cooperation with the banned Mojahedin-e
Khalq organization (MEK).[65]Mahdieh Golroo, a
student activist and another member of CDRE, was in prison since November 3,
2009, but has since been released. In April 2010, a revolutionary court
convicted her of national security crimes and sentenced her to 28 months in prison.[66]
Another cofounder of CDRE, Majid Dorri, is serving a six-year prison sentence
for his student activities.[67]

Several hundred others
have been expelled from campus because of their political activism or religious
affiliation. Since 2005, authorities have barred more than 350 students from
university education on political and religious grounds, according to a recent report by the UN
special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran.[68]

Nabavi, Golroo, and Dorri formed CDRE in 2008 after
authorities barred them from continuing their university studies. It is one of
several student groups that publicized and resisted the government's policy of
preventing students from continuing their higher education on political or
religious grounds. Another similar group is the Population to Combat
Educational Discrimination, which largely addressed the government's official
policy of preventing Baha’is
admission to or expelling them from universities once it becomes
known that they are Baha’is. In 2009, authorities also prevented Ali
Qolizadeh and Mohsen Barzegar, two recently arrested members of Tahkim-e
Vahdat, from continuing their studies.[69]

According to a recent Tahkim report, since March 2009 there
have been 436 arrests, 254 convictions, and 364 cases of deprivation of
education against students. Tahkim also alleges that the judiciary summoned at
least 144 students for investigations, and that officials have closed down 13
student publications.[70] As a
result of these pressures, dozens of student and student activists, many of
whom were deprived of continuing their education, left Iran to pursue their
education elsewhere.

Journalists and
Bloggers

Since President Ahmadinejad took power in 2005, dozens of
journalists and bloggers have left the country because of increasing
limitations on the press and threats against them. According to
Reporters Without Borders, more than 76 journalists were forced into exile in
and authorities have shut down at least 55 publications since 2009.[71]According
to Reporters Without Borders as of August 2012 there were at least 44
journalists and bloggers in prison, making Iran one of the largest jailer of
journalists in the world.[72] The
Judiciary imposed harsh sentences on journalists and bloggers based on vague
and ill-defined press and security laws such as “acting against the
national security,” “propaganda against the state,”
“publishing lies,” and insulting the prophets or government
officials such as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or President Ahmadinejad.[73]

In September 2010, a revolutionary court
sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, a prominent Iranian blogger, to 19-and-a-half
years in prison for espionage, “propaganda against the state,”
and “insulting sanctities.”[74] On January 17, 2012, Iran’s Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence for Saeed Malekpour, a
blogger holding Canadian permanent resident status, convicted of
“insulting and desecrating Islam” in October 2011. In December 2012
Malekpour’s lawyer announced that his client had repented and the
Judiciary had therefore suspended his death sentence.[75] The judiciary has
sentenced at least three other individuals, Mehdi Hashempour, Vahid Asghari,
and Mehdi Alizadeh, to death on internet-related charges including
“running obscene websites.”[76]

The government blocks many websites that carry
political news and analysis, slows down internet speeds to hinder web access,
and jams foreign satellite broadcasts. In March 2011, authorities announced
that they were funding a multi-million-dollar project to build what they called
a halal(i.e. permissible according to Islamic law)
national internet in Iran to protect the country from socially and morally
corrupt content. On January 4, 2012, local newspapers printed new regulations
issued by Iran’s new cyber police unit that gave internet cafes 15 days
to install security cameras and begin collecting personal information from customers
for tracking purposes. Internet users and rights groups are concerned that an
increase in recent interruptions to internet connectivity and blocked sites may
be evidence that Iran is testing their new national intranet.[77]

On September 21, 2010, a
revolutionary court sentenced Emad Baghi, the prominent writer and rights
activist who founded the Association to Defend Prisoners’ Rights, to six
years in prison for an interview he had conducted in 2007 with dissident cleric
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, which the BBC had rebroadcast in 2009.[78] An appeals court later overturned five years of
Baghi’s sentence and prison officials released him on June 20, 2011.

Human Rights
Lawyers

Since 2005, and especially since June 2009, authorities have
imprisoned, prosecuted, or harassed dozens of defense lawyers. In August 2011,
Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi said at least 42 lawyers had faced government
persecution since 2009. Several lawyers are currently serving prison sentences
on politically motivated charges, while others like Ebadi have effectively been
forced into exile, in Ebadi’s case after authorities shut down her Center
for Defenders of Human Rights (CDHR) and declared it illegal.[79]

They have also resorted to other methods to prevent lawyers
from practicing their profession freely. Such measures include unwarranted tax
investigations under which the authorities freeze the lawyers’ bank
accounts and other financial assets and which could lead to the disbarring of a
lawyer.[80] Authorities
have also limited the independence of the Iranian Bar Association by barring lawyers from
running for high-level office in the association on discriminatory grounds,
including their imputed political opinions and their human rights
activities. For example, in 2008, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Hadi Esmailzadeh,
Farideh Gheyrat, and Abdolfattah Soltani, all members of the Center for Human
Rights Defenders, were disqualified by the judiciary from running in the
election for the association’s Central Board because of their activities
as human rights defenders.[81]

In September 2010, authorities arrested Nasrin Sotoudeh, who
represented numerous political prisoners. On, January 9, 2011, Iranian
authorities sentenced Sotoudeh to 11 years in jail for charges that included
“acting against the national security” and “propaganda
against the state.” She was also barred from practicing law and from
leaving the country for 20 years. In September 2011, the Judiciary reduced her
sentence to six years imprisonment.[82]

High-level Iranian officials denied accusations that
Sotoudeh was arrested for her activities as a lawyer. In 2010 Mohammad Javad
Larijani, the head of the Human Rights Council of the Judiciary, said that
Sotoudeh had engaged “in a very nasty campaign” against the
government, referring to interviews with her by foreign Persian-language media
outlets in which she spoke in defense of her clients. On January 20, Sadegh
Larijani, the head of the Judiciary, repeated the government's warning that
lawyers should refrain from giving interviews that “damage our Islamic system
of governance.”[83]

Since her arrest Human Rights Watch had other rights groups
have repeatedly called on the Iranian authorities to release her
unconditionally, and allow her regular visitation rights by her family. In
November 2012 the European Parliament awarded Soutoudeh and the Iranian
filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.[84]

In February 2011, a revolutionary court sentenced Mohammad
Ali Dadkhah, cofounder and spokesperson for the Center for Defenders of Human
Rights, to nine years in prison and banned him from teaching in universities
and practicing as a lawyer for 10 years.[85] On
April 28, 2012, Dadkhah learned that an appeals court had affirmed the lower
court’s ruling. Authorities notified him that he would soon be summoned
to serve his prison term.[86] Authorities
transferred him to Evin prison on September 30, 2011. In February 2011, another
revolutionary court sentenced Khalil Bahramian to 18 months in prison on
charges of “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the
head of the judiciary,” and imposed a 10-year ban on his practicing law.[87]

On March 4, 2012, Abdolfattah Soltani was convicted and
sentenced to 18 years in prison on national security charges after two court
sessions. The court’s judgment bars Soltani from practicing law for 20
years after his release because “the accused has used the law as a tool
and cover to commit … crimes.” The sentence also requires Soltani,
a Tehran resident, to serve his term “in exile” in a prison in the
town of Borazjan, more than 600 kilometers south of the capital, in Bushehr
province, because “his presence inside a Tehran prison will cause
corruption.”[88]
Authorities had previously alleged that Soltani, who had earlier spent time in
Evin prison, improperly provided legal advice to other prisoners.[89]

Branch 26 of Tehran’s
revolutionary court convicted Soltani of several national security charges,
including “propaganda against the state,” assembly and collusion
against the state, and establishing the CDHRs, the nongovernmental organization that Soltani
co-founded with Ebadi in 2003 which the government says is illegal. The court
also convicted Soltani of “receiving funds through illegitimate
means,” referring to a human rights prize from the German city of
Nuremberg which he received in 2009.[90] An appeals court later reduced Soltain’s
prison sentence to 13 years but upheld the 20-year ban on practicing law.[91]

At least eight other lawyers, including Ebadi, Mohammad Mostafaei, Mohammad
Olyaeifard and Shadi Sadr, have been forced to leave the country as a result of
repeated arrests, detention, and harassment. Mohammad Mostafaei fled Iran after
authorities repeatedly summoned him for questioning and detained his wife,
father-in-law, and brother-in-law.[92].
Mostafaei represented high-profile defendants such as Sakineh Mohammadi
Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to death by stoning, and numerous juvenile
detainees on death row.[93] He is
currently residing in Norway. Another one of Ashtiani's lawyers, Houtan Kian,
is also in prison.[94]

More recently, Olyaeifard, another prominent Iranian lawyer
who represented many high profile cases before Iran’s civil and
revolutionary courts, was forced to leave the country after serving a one year
prison sentence for “propaganda against the state,” imposed by the
authorities because he spoke out against the execution of one of his clients
during interviews with international media.[95]

III. Refugees’ Stories

Protesters

Mohammad-Reza Bigdelifard

Mohammad-Reza Bigdelifard, now a refugee in Turkey, told
Human Rights Watch that he, his wife, and his brother-in-law worked as
volunteers for a civil society group that supported the presidential campaign
Mir Hossein Moussavi.[96] They
were in charge of voting research and polling in various neighborhoods in
Tehran, and coordinated their work with media outlets such as the official Iran
Labor News Agency. In June 2009, Bigdelifard, his wife, and his
brother-in-law joined several peaceful demonstrations in Tehran protesting the
outcome of the presidential election.[97]

On Wednesday, June 17, Bigdelifard and his wife participated
in a large demonstration at Tehran’s Haft-e Tir Square. Bigdelifard told
Human Rights Watch that at one point during the demonstration, someone took a
picture of the two of them standing behind a large banner that read:
“Dust and Trash.”[98] Both
Bigdelifard and his wife were wearing masks covering a portion of their faces.

The next day, Thursday, June 18, the picture was published
widely in media outlets, including the reformist Iranian daily Etemad-e
Melli, Hayat-e No, and websites such as the BBC. About a month later
security forces raided Bigdelifard’s home in Tehran. They arrested him
and confiscated his personal belongings, including his computer, documents, and
CDs. Bigdelifard was handcuffed, taken to a parked car waiting outside, and
blindfolded. He was transferred to an unknown location, possibly a secret
detention facility, and kept there for approximately 34 days. He said he was
blindfolded and cuffed most of the time.

Bigdelifard told Human Rights Watch that his captors
routinely subjected him to physical and psychological torture. His captors
regularly beat and whipped him, and he endured numerous interrogation sessions
during which his interrogators accused him of having links with armed groups
working to destabilize the state, as well as with opposition and reformist
figures, and dissident sects. Authorities primarily relied on information
gathered at his home during the day of the arrest in order to get him to
confess to these trumped-up charges. Bigdelifard said that on several occasions
authorities threatened him with execution, and carried out mock executions
during which he (and several others) had nooses placed around their necks. On
at least one occasion, authorities kicked the chair underneath his legs, but he
simply fell to the ground.

Bigdelifard also told Human Rights Watch that his captors
threatened him with sexual assault if he did not cooperate with interrogators
and confess to his “crimes.”

One time my interrogator asked me to write down whatever he
wanted me to. “If you don’t do what I say I’ll pull down your
pants and fuck you,” he said. I refused. So he pushed me on a desk and
pulled down my pants. I began to cry. He called someone else over. I could feel
the warmth of someone’s penis against my back. I told him I’d write
whatever he wanted. But he said it was too late.[99]

Bigdelifard said his interrogator did not act on the threat,
but forced him to write down his confessions with his pants down.

Bigdelifard was eventually released from detention through
the efforts of his brother, who bribed an influential member of the
Revolutionary Guards. As a condition of his release, he was instructed not to
discuss his experiences with anyone, and ordered to leave the country at once.
He lived in hiding in a city in northern Iran for approximately eight months
prior to escaping to Turkey. His wife and brother-in-law, who had escaped
arrest and were in hiding themselves, joined Bigdelifard for the cross-border
journey to Turkey.[100]

Shahram Bolouri

Shahram Bolouri, 27, also participated in protests following
the disputed 2009 presidential election. He told Human Rights Watch that he
documented violence against peaceful protesters by security forces. He
disseminated photographs and videos of the post-election violence and provided
eyewitness accounts to various media outlets. Prior to his 2009 election
activities, Bolouri was a member of the Kurdish Society, an NGO in Tehran, and
cooperated with other civil society organizations.

On June 23, 2009, security and intelligence agents raided his
home in Tehran and arrested him. They held him in Tehran’s Evin prison
for almost 8 months, 45 days of which was in solitary confinement. Bolouri told
Human Rights Watch that authorities kept him in wards 209 and 240, controlled by
the Ministry of Intelligence, before transferring him to the general ward.
Bolouri said interrogators and prison guards subjected him to severe
psychological as well as physical ill-treatment and torture.

My solitary cell [in Ward 240] measured 2.5 by 1 meter. It
had a toilet and no windows. Prison guards would often come in and order me to
stand, sit, and perform odd tasks just because they could. One of them once
said to me, “You look like an athlete. Select your sport. Stand up and
sit down for me. One hundred times, and make sure you count!” He made me
do this several times even though I had a busted leg. I was sweating profusely
but they didn’t let me shower. After two weeks the same guy opened the
door to my cell and said, “Why does it smell like shit in here?” He
ordered me to go take a shower and wash my clothes.[101]

On February 16, 2010, more than six months after he was
detained, authorities released Bolouri on bail in the unusually high amount of
US$ 200,000 after preventing his family from posting the amount for weeks.
Bolouri said that the financial and psychological pressure authorities put on
his family was sometimes worse than what he endured in prison. Human Rights
Watch has documented numerous other instances where authorities required
families to post unusually high bail amounts as part of a systematic strategy
to harass detainees and their families.

In October 2010, a revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced
Bolouri to four years in prison on charges of “assembly and collusion
against the state by participating in protests and communicating with foreign
broadcasts and disseminating news.”[102] Bolour
appealed, but in June 2011, the Judiciary issued another ruling
increasing his sentence to four years and six months. Bolouri decided to leave
Iran after increasing pressures and harassment against him and his family
following the appeals court ruling. He lodged a refugee claim with the UNHCR
field office in Iraq on July 15, 2011, and is now seeking refugee status and
resettlement in a third country.[103]

Media Byezid

Media Bayezid, a student activist and blogger previously
expelled from Esfahan University after he participated in Student Day protests
in 2005, joined Mehdi Karroubi’s presidential campaign in 2008. On the
evening of June 12, 2009, Bayezid and others in Karroubi’s campaign were
responsible for monitoring the vote count by the Ministry of Interior. He told
Human Rights Watch that he and colleagues working for Mousavi’s campaign
reported some voting irregularities to authorities. Instead of looking into
them, Ministry of Interior officials warned both Karroubi and Mousavi’s
campaigns that if there were any “disruptions” they would be held
responsible.

Bayezid and others from Karroubi’s campaign went to
Tehran to join post-election demonstrators after the official results were
announced. He said he returned to Saqqez on November 7, which is when his
problems began.

I got a call to meet someone at Payam-e Nur University in
Saqqez when I returned who said he wanted to meet me. When I went there I
noticed a green car with two persons who approached me. One of them said
someone had complained that I was harassing them on the phone and I need to be
questioned by [the police.] They put me in car, shoved my head down, and sped
away. I later found out they were Ministry of Intelligence agents.[104]

He continued:

We went to the local setad-e khabari[105]
of the Ministry of Intelligence. I was blindfolded. The interrogator came into
the room and began accusing me of having contacts with Kurdish guerrilla
groups. My father was in Koya [Iraqi Kurdistan] and I had crossed the border
illegally into Iraqi Kurdistan several times. He accused me of having contacts
with PJAK [Kurdish Party for Free Life of Kurdistan] and other
banned Kurdish parties. When I refused to admit these contacts he slapped
me and said, “This is not your aunt’s house!” Then he said
they had been tapping my phone for a while and played recordings of my
conversations.[106]

Bayezid said his interrogator questioned him for seven or
eight hours. Authorities beat and harassed him several times during the 13 days
they kept him at the Ministry of Intelligence detention facility. They
eventually released Bayezid, but continued to summon him in for further
interrogations until he decided to leave the country.[107]

Minority Rights
Activists

Ahmad Mamandi

Hezha (Ahmad) Mamandi, a Kurdish rights activist, was one of
the earliest members of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan (HROK). The
judiciary initially sentenced him to an 11-year prison sentence in Evin prison
on various national security-related charges. He told Human Rights Watch that intelligence
agents had arrested him numerous times since 2005 because of his activities
with HROK and other local rights groups.

I was at Azad University in Mahabad collecting signatures
[in 2006] when several intelligence agents arrested me and another colleague,
put us in a car, and drove us to the local detention facility. They
interrogated me for two weeks. They asked lots of questions about HROK and its
relations with America. They beat me several times, but were careful not to hit
me in the face. I had no access to a lawyer. After two weeks they sent me and
my colleague to a Mahabad revolutionary court. The court session lasted about
two to three minutes. When we tried to speak to the judge he kicked us out of
the courtroom. They transferred us to the central prison in Mahabad and I found
out a bit later that we’d been sentenced to 20 months imprisonment for acting
against the national security and disturbing the public.[108]

Mamandi told Human Rights
Watch that on appeal the Judiciary decreased his sentence to 10 months and
authorities freed him in 2006. Upon release, he continued his underground
activities with HROK, but after authorities arrested Kaboudvand and Saman Rasoulpour,
two of the group’s leaders, in 2006 and 2007 respectively, the group
scaled back its activities.

In 2010, after the
execution of Farzad Kamangar and several other Kurdish activists, Mamandi and
his colleagues at HROK helped organize a region-wide strike in Iran’s
Kurdish areas. Mamandi said the strike was effective and angered the
authorities. He discovered that Intelligence agents had identified him and
several others as organizers of the strike.

Several days later, on May 22, 2010, Manandi fled to Iraqi
Kurdistan.[109]

Amir Babekri

Amir Babekri was a teacher and journalist in Piranshahr, a
Kurdish-majority city in West Azerbaijan province. Babekri joined the HROK in
2005 and worked on various rights issues affecting Iran’s Kurds. He told
Human Rights Watch that agents from the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit
arrested him at the primary school where he was teaching in December 2007.

Three armed men stuffed me into a Toyota and took me to a
local detention facility. There they tried connecting me to Kurdish political
parties. I rejected this. They threatened to send me to [the northwestern city of]
Orumiyeh if I refused to cooperate. I told them to go ahead and do it. They hit
me several times the last night I was there before being transferred to Orumiyeh
but I was not tortured.[110]

At the Orumiyeh detention facility, he continued,

There were around 40 people in two separate rooms. The
authorities had accused some of them with having ties to PJAK.[111]
Every day there were interrogations, and we heard lots of screaming. I was
interrogated for a total of 18 days, but they transferred me for questioning to
another facility which was about five to six minutes away by car. I was
blindfolded. There they subjected me and the others to various forms of
ill-treatment. Sometimes they threw us out in the snow. Other times they would
handcuff us to a wall and force us to stand on the tips of our toes. They also hit
us over the head with batons.[112]

Babekri said his interrogator asked him lots of questions
about his contacts at HROK. He said he was finally forced to acknowledge his
membership in HROK, but refused to give up names of others who worked in the
HROK underground network. Authorities eventually charged Babekri with moharebeh,
or enmity against God, membership in an illegal group, and illegally crossing
into Iraqi Kurdistan. He told Human Rights Watch that his indictment in a
revolutionary court in Orumiyeh lasted two to three minutes. He had no legal
representation, and recalled there were several Revolutionary Guards officers
present inside the courtroom.

After four months the Judiciary tried him during a 30-minute
court session. This time he had a lawyer present.[113]They
had dropped the more serious moharebeh charge, but he was convicted on
the charge of “propaganda against the state” and membership of HROK.
The judge sentenced him to one year three months imprisonment.

As a result of continuing pressure by local authorities and
his inability to teach in Piranshahr, Babekri decided to leave Iran and lodged
a refugee claim with UNHCR in Iraqi Kurdistan on July 15, 2009.[114]

Rebin Rahmani

Kurdish rights activist Rebin Rahmani told Human Rights
Watch that security forces arrested him on November 19, 2006, in Kermanshah,
the capital city of the western Iranian province of the same name. At the time
he was involved in a project researching the prevalence of drug addiction and
HIV infections in Kermanshah province. After his arrest, Rahmani spent
approximately two months in detention facilities run by the Ministry of
Intelligence, and was interrogated by intelligence agents in both Kermanshah
and Sanandaj, the main city in the adjacent Iranian province of Kurdistan. He
told Human Rights Watch that during his time in these two facilities there he
was subjected to several rounds of interrogation accompanied by physical and
psychological torture.

In January 2007, a revolutionary court sentenced Rahmani to
five years’ imprisonment on charges of “acting against national
security,” and “propaganda against the state.” The sentence
was handed down after a 15-minute trial during which Rahmani had no access to a
lawyer. In March of that year his sentence was reduced to two years on appeal.

After his appeal Rahmani was primarily kept in
Kermanshah’s Dizel Abad prison, but was transferred to detention
facilities operated by the Ministry of Intelligence on several occasions for
additional interrogations. He told Human Rights Watch that during his
interrogations he was again subjected to physical and mental abuse amounting to
torture, and kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time in an
attempt to force him to falsely confess to links to armed Kurdish separatist
groups. Interrogators also threatened to arrest his family members, and
eventually arrested his brother in June 2008 in part to put pressure on
Rahmani. As a result of these pressures, Rahmani attempted suicide on two
occasions. Intelligence authorities were not able to bring any additional
charges against him, he said.

Upon his release from
prison in the latter part 2008, Rahmani learned that he had been dismissed from
university and could no longer continue his education. He told Human Rights
Watch that he decided to join the local rights group, Human Rights Activists in
Iran (HRA), but used a pseudonym because he was afraid he would be rearrested
by authorities. Prior to his eventual escape to Iraqi Kurdistan due to mounting
pressure against him and his family, Rahmani interviewed victims and their
families and prepared reports for HRA, most of which focused on rights
violations perpetrated by the government in Iran’s Kurdish regions. He
was also responsible for administering Kurdish-language content of the HRA
website.[115]

During the crackdown in March
2010 against rights groups including HRA in Tehran and other major cities
(described above), Rahmani escaped arrest because he was not identified as an
active member of HRA at the time. But in May 2010, following his participation
in a rally against the execution of several Kurdish political prisoners, local
authorities put Rahmani under surveillance. In December 2010, security forces
raided his house shortly after he attended a gathering outside Sanandaj prison to
protest the imminent execution of Habibollah Latifi.[116]

Rahmani felt forced to escape to Iraqi Kurdistan and registered
with the UNHCR office in Erbil on March 6, 2011.[117]

Fayegh Roorast

Fayegh Roorast, a Kurdish
activist and law student at Orumiyeh University, told Human Rights Watch that prior
to his arrest in January 2009 he cooperated with several rights and civil
society groups such as HROK, HRA, and the One Million Signatures Campaign. He
said Ministry of Intelligence agents began targeting him around the time when
the judiciary sentenced Farzad Kamangar to death, in March 2008.[118] Roorast had conducted several interviews with
foreign media outlets regarding the arrest of Kamangar, Zainab Bayazidi and
other Kurdish rights activists.[119]

On January 25, 2009 intelligence
agents attacked Roorast’s father’s shop and arrested his father. A
little while later they entered Roorast’s home in Mahabad and seized his
personal belongings, but did not arrest him at that time. Two days later Roorast as well as his
brother, sister, and aunt were all summoned to the local Ministry of
Intelligence office in Mahabad. He said officials accused all of them of
working with banned Kurdish opposition groups, including the PJAK. Intelligence
officials released the rest of his family but kept Roorast at the detention
facility for about 17 days.

At the Mahabad Ministry of Intelligence facility they
threatened and harassed me every day. My interrogator played good cop with me
to urge cooperation, and bad cop when I refused to do what he wanted. He beat
me and threatened to harm, even rape, members of my family. After five days of
interrogations and beatings he said to me, “Until now you were only being
interrogated. From now on I’m responsible for teaching you lesson.”[120]

Roorast said that he was
later transferred to a Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in Orumiyeh.

The authorities held me in solitary confinement for several
days. There were three interrogation, or torture, rooms downstairs. I heard
lots of horrible sounds coming from there. They took me there about 15 or 16
times. The place reeked of urine and feces. There they subjected me to all
types of torture, including hanging me by my wrists on wall so I’d be
forced to stand on my toes, applying electric shocks to the tips of my toes and
fingers, and beating me up. They asked me why I had kept lists of prisoners’
names and why I’d collected signatures for the One Million Signatures
Campaign.[121]

Roorast told Human Rights Watch that he refused to provide
names. Authorities released him in early 2010. He left Iran for Iraqi Kurdistan later that summer.

Student Activists

Hesam Misaghi

On January 1, 2010, the Ministry of Intelligence contacted Hesam
Misaghi, a student activist and member of the Committee of Human Rights
Reporting (CHRR) by phone and summoned him for interrogation. The Ministry of
Intelligence agent informed Misaghi that a warrant for his arrest had been
issued, and threatened to raid his home if he did not voluntarily report to ministry.
Later that day, two other CHRR members who had been similarly summoned to the ministry
presented themselves and were promptly arrested.[122]

Altogether at least seven members of CHRR were altogether arrested
from 2009-10, some in connection with the so called “Iran Proxy”
affair (see above). However, Misaghi ignored the summons and went into hiding.
He entered Turkey with his colleague Sepehr Atefi in January 2010.[123]

In addition to his CHRR-related activities, Hesam Misaghi
was involved with various student and civil society causes including work on
protection of Iran’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Esfahan’s
Sana’i University dismissed Misaghi after he received a letter from the Ministry
of Science indicating that they knew he was from a Baha’i family. He
became an activist after he was expelled from university in 2007. Several of
Misaghi’s Baha’i colleagues who were either members or affiliates of
CHRR, including Navid Khanjani and Sepehr Atefi, were similarly expelled from
their universities because of their religious faith. The government allowed
Khanjani and Atefi to sit for the national exam, but did not allow them to enroll
in a university, claiming their files were incomplete. The Ministry of Science
and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution summarily dismissed their
complaints.[124]

In response to these
events, Khanjani, Misaghi and others in 2009 helped found the Population to
Combat Educational Discrimination, to bring attention to the problems of the
Baha’is and other students denied access to university education because
of their religious and political beliefs. In cooperation with other human
rights groups—Human Rights Activists in Iran, the Committee of Human
Rights Reporters, and the Council to Defend the Right to Education—the
students held meetings in various cities across Iran, including Tehran, Shiraz,
Sari and Kermanshah, where they openly shared their experiences and shed light
on the draconian role played by various government agencies tasked with
implementing a secret 1991 directive from the Supreme Council of the Cultural
Revolution calling for the government to deal
with Bahais “in such a way that their progress and development are
blocked.”[125]

Misaghi joined a local human rights NGO and became its spokesperson
on the rights of students denied access to higher education for their political
and religious beliefs. He was also a founding member of the Population to
Combat Educational Discrimination. In 2008, security forces briefly detained Misaghi.
Ministry of Science officials threatened him with arrest when he confronted them
during his interrogation about the government’s systematic policy of
expelling Baha’i students.

The government’s response to the activities of Misaghi
and his colleagues was harsh, including pursuing their arrest for advocating on
behalf of those seeking a college education. Late on the evening of March 2,
members of the Ministry of Intelligence entered Navid Khanjani’s home in
the city of Esfahan and arrested him. The next day, they conducted similar
raids at the homes of Eeghan Shahidi, Sama Nourani, Hesam Misaghi and Sepehr
Atefi. They arrested Shahidi and Nourani, but Misaghi and Atefi had fled to
Turkey weeks before.

At the time of Khanjani's arrest, security agents told him
that they knew Misaghi, and Atefi were in Turkey and that the authorities would
eventually succeed in bringing them back to Iran. Many of the human rights
activists with whom these Baha’i students cooperated were also arrested
and imprisoned for their activities.[126]

Yaser Goli

Student activist Yaser Goli was secretary of the Kurdish
Democratic Student Union. In 2006, Ministry of Intelligence agents arrested him.
He received a four-month suspended sentence. University authorities eventually
prevented Goli from continuing his graduate studies as punishment for his
political activities.[127] In
addition to his activities with the Kurdish Democratic Student Union, Goli was
involved with various civil society organizations such as One Million
Signatures Campaign, the Azarmehr Society of Kurdish Women (a group that
organizes capacity-building workshops and sports activities for women in
Sanandaj and elsewhere in the province of Kurdistan), and the human rights
committee of the Kurdish Democratic Student Union.

In late 2007, after he continued his activities and protested
the university’s decision to ban him, security forces arrested Goli and
transferred him to a detention facility in Sanandaj administered by the Ministry
of Intelligence. During the next three months, Ministry of Intelligence agents
repeatedly interrogated Goli, subjected him to physical and psychological
torture, and held him in solitary confinement. In November 2008, a revolutionary
court convicted Goli of crime of the moharebeh, or “enmity against
God,” and sentenced him to 15 years’ imprisonment and “exile”
at a prison facility in Kerman province (located in the south of Iran well over
1,000 kilometers from Sanandaj). Government authorities eventually allowed Goli
temporary leave to treat a serious heart condition after his family posted
bail.[128] Goli
escaped Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan with his family in March 2010.[129]

Journalists and
Bloggers

Amin Khawala

Journalist Amin Khawala provided information to Human Rights
Watch about increasing pressures on reporters in Iran’s Kurdistan
province. Khawala worked as a correspondent with the Saqqez News Center (SNC),
an important news outlet in Saqqez, a Kurdish-majority city, covering local and
regional news of concern to Iran’s Kurdish minority.[130]

Khawala told Human Rights Watch that since SNC began its
activities in 2006, authorities pressured the outlet because of the sensitive nature
of some of the news it covers, including publishing of the names of dozens of suspected
smugglers shot dead by Iranian security and border agents in Kurdistan
province, the names of high-ranking local government officials allegedly
involved in corruption, and the names of local opposition and rights activists arbitrarily
arrested by security forces. Khawala said authorities were also angered by
SNC’s coverage of information regarding the results of the 2009
presidential elections in Kurdistan province, which challenged the
government’s official position regarding the results.

Khawala told Human Rights Watch that authorities filtered the
SNC website in April 2011 and security forces raided the home of Editor-in-Chief
Atta Hamedi on January 4, 2011 and confiscated his personal belongings. Khawala
added:

I was summoned and warned by the Ministry of Intelligence
many times. They threatened me and said I had committed blasphemy as well as accusing
me of being involved in criminal and terrorist activities. I had already been convicted
and sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term by an Iranian revolutionary
court in 2011. They threatened to reopen my file and send me to prison, so I
had to escape to Iraqi Kurdistan.[131]

Khawala fled to Iraqi Kurdistan on
March 3, 2011. Since then Iranian security forces have repeatedly harassed his family
in order to force him to go back to Iran.

Abbas Khorsandi

Abbas Khorsandi, a blogger and political activist, founded
the Iran Democratic Party, a small unregistered political party with a handful
of members who publish articles on the internet. The group operated openly
until agents from the Ministry of Intelligence arrested Khorsandi in January
2005 and accused him of forming an illegal party. Khorsandi told Human Rights
Watch that after three months in prison he was released and ordered to dissolve
the party. He refused and continued his activities with the group underground.

On September 9, 2007,
intelligence agents arrested Khorsandi in Firuzkuh, a small town located
approximately 140 km east of Tehran. Authorities held him at Evin prison for
approximately three months, without access to his lawyer or family members. He told
Human Rights Watch that authorities transferred him to section 209 of Evin
prison, which is under the control of the Ministry of Intelligence, soon after
his arrest. He said he faced two rounds of interrogations which included severe
physical and psychological abuse amounting to torture. He was eventually forced
to sign confessions regarding his activities as the secretary-general of the
Iran Democratic Party. Based on these confessions, authorities charged him with
“acting against the national security” and “forming an
illegal organization.”

Prosecutors tried Khorsandi in Branch 15 of Tehran’s
Revolutionary Court in March 2008 and sentenced him to eight years in prison on
March 17, 2008. Branch 36 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court confirmed
Khorsandi’s eight year sentence on appeal on July 12, 2008. He told Human
Rights Watch that on May 18, 2009 he received a 10-day medical leave but stayed
out of prison until late August 2009, when the Judiciary ordered him to return.
In prison he suffered from several serious health ailments including heart
disease, internal bleeding, and diabetes and was denied access to proper
medical care. In October 2009, Khorsandi was transferred to a hospital where his
doctors told him that if he returned to prison his life would be in serious
jeopardy.

Khorsandi eventually decided to flee Iran while on medical
leave. He entered Iraqi Kurdistan on February 17, 2010. His wife and two children
joined him in Iraqi Kurdistan in January 2012.[132]

Others

Fatemeh Goftari

Ministry of Intelligence agents first arrested Fatemeh
Goftari in 2002 in Sanandaj, the capital city of the Iranian province of Kurdistan,
and charged her with propaganda against the state. A revolutionary court
convicted and sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment. Her sentence was
later suspended and she served only six months. At the time, she had been a
member of Azarmehr Society of Kurdish Women, a co-founder of the Kurdistan
Mothers for Peace, and active in the One Million Signatures Campaign.

Ministry of Intelligence agents arrested Goftari again on
January 14, 2008 in Sanandaj. A revolutionary court convicted her of acting
against the national security because of her civil society activities and
sentenced her to 25 months in prison. She spent a portion of this time in
solitary confinement in a prison in the town of Birjand, in South Khorasan
province, well over 1, 000 kilometers east of her hometown of Sanandaj. After
her release from prison she and her husband were repeatedly monitored and
summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence office in Sanandaj. Goftari eventually
left Iran in March 2010 after refusing to comply with a summons order and
escaping an attempted arrest during which she was beaten by security forces.[133]

Mohammad Oliyaeifard

Mohammad Oliyaeifard, a defense lawyer, served a prison
sentence imposed for speaking out against the execution of one of his clients
during interviews with international media.[134]
His client, juvenile offender Behnoud Shojaee, had been hanged for a murder he
committed when he was 17 years old.[135] Mohammad
Olyaeifard has defended many prisoners of conscience, including independent
trade unionists and student activists, as well as juvenile offenders. His
lawyer is Nasrin Sotoudeh, herself currently in prison.

Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court convicted
and sentenced him to one year in prison in February 2010 for the
“propaganda against the Islamic Republic by conducting an interview with
Voice of America’s foreign service.” Olyaeifard served his sentence
in Ward 350 of Evin prison from March 2010 until April 2011.[136]

Olyaeifard told Human Rights Watch that during the past few
years authorities have intensified their pressure against defense lawyers by
relying on various provisions of the Islamic Penal Code to silence them and prevent
them from effectively representing their clients. In addition to propaganda
against the state, authorities have increasingly brought charges against
prominent defense lawyers such as “publication of lies in an attempt to
create public anxiety” and defamation, and sought to ban lawyers from
practicing in addition to imprisonment. For example, Olyaeifard said that
authorities from the Ministry of Intelligence and Branch 15 of Tehran’s
Revolutionary Court brought a suit against him in May 2009 in Tehran’s
criminal court because he publicly complained about the torture of two of his
clients, Solman Sima and Majid Asadi, during their solitary confinement in
prison. If convicted, Olyaeifard could face a lifetime ban on the practice of
law.[137]

Olyeaeifard left Iran in January 2012

Other lawyers forced into exile include Shadi Sadr, who left
the country after she was detained for 11 days in July 2009, Ardeshir Amir
Arjomand, an advisor to former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi
currently in exile in Paris, and Mohammad Hossein Nayyeri, living in London.

IV. Their Lives as
Refugees

According to statistics compiled by UNHCR from 44
industrialized countries that conduct individual asylum procedures, there were
11,537 new asylum applications from Iranians to these 44 countries in 2009;
15,185 in 2010; and 18,128 in 2011.[138] The
largest number of new asylum applications was lodged in neighboring Turkey. Since
2005 several hundred Iranians have lodged asylum applications in areas of
northern Iraq administered by the Kurdish Regional Government.[139].

Though there has not been a massive exodus of Iranians since
2009 (the numbers worldwide are below 20,000 per year) there have been
noticeable increases in the number both of asylum applications and of civil
society activists who have left the country since 2009. In the immediate
aftermath of the 2009 June protests and the crackdown that followed, several
European Union countries such as Germany, Italy, and France provided visas to civil
society activists, journalists, political dissidents, and rights activists
outside the UNHCR framework. The majority of the rest of those who fled Iran
since 2009 have either chosen to cross the Turkish-Greece border illegally and
seek asylum in a European Union country or to file for refugee status and
third-country resettlement in Turkey, northern Iraq or elsewhere.

Prospects for third-country resettlement in the United
States, Europe, Canada, and Australia, the most popular destinations for refugees
and asylum seekers, have dimmed over the past few years largely because many European
Union countries have essentially shut their doors to Iranian refugees seeking
third-country resettlement. Currently the main countries for resettlement of
Iranians are the United States, Canada, Australia, Norway, and Finland,
according to UNHCR officials.[140]

Turkey

As of April 30, 2012, Iranians constituted 5,736 out of
26,024 (22 percent) of “people of concern” to UNHCR in Turkey.[141]
In 2009, Iranians lodged 1,981 new applications for refugee status in Turkey.
The numbers for 2010 were 2,881, and 3,414 for 2011, a 45 and 72 percent
increase since 2009.

Turkey is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention; however,
it maintains a geographical limitation to its accession to the Convention so
that it only recognizes as refugees those who originate from Europe. For
non-Europeans, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) and the Turkish government conduct parallel refugee status
determination (RSD) interviews.

UNHCR regards as refugees those who meet the international
refugee definition of having a well-founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social
group, or political opinion, and conducts the refugee status determination for
all non-European applicants. Turkey also undertakes an asylum assessment and
grants “temporary asylum seekers” to those who meet the asylum
seeker definition as per Ministry of Intelligence 1994 Regulation. These
persons can, according to the Regulation, remain in Turkey pending their
resettlement in a third country

Sometimes Turkey refuses to issue exit permits for those who
did not abide to the existing regulation on residency in a designated city
until such time that the person regularizes stay. If their application for
temporary asylum seeker status is rejected one final instance, Turkey may order
their removal back to their country of origin. Despite these limitations,
Turkey has received the largest number of Iranian refugees of any other country
because in addition to sharing a border with Iran and being a transit route to
continental Europe, visas for Iranian passport holders can be obtained at the border.

In October 2011, the Turkish government issued a directive
which gives the Alien’s Police the power to reach during 30 days a first
decision on an asylum-seeker’s application in seven selected cities.[142]
According to the UNHCR office in Ankara, beginning in January 2012 UNHCR
officers began noticing cases where Turkish authorities had rejected Iranians
and other asylum seekers before UNHCR had the opportunity to make an assessment
of their claims. UNHCR Ankara told Human Rights Watch that they have advised
all individuals whose applications have been rejected by Turkish authorities to
appeal within the necessary timeframe (15 days). The rejection on first
instance does not have any effect on the right of the applicant to remain
legally in Turkey provided he submits an appeal.

Although the directive empowered authorities to make first-instance
decisions, in the majority of cases the Ministry of Interior still waits for
UNHCR to make a final decision upon appeal before issuing their own appellate
decision (per standard practice before). Despite this, the increase in first
refugee status determination (RSD) rejections made by Turkish authorities casts
some doubt on the legal status (i.e., right to stay in Turkey) of asylum
seekers who are rejected by the Ministry of Interior, and further complicates
the somewhat complex relationship between UNHCR and the Turkish government.[143]

During their time in Turkey, refugees and asylum seekers are
expected to follow local regulations restricting what they can and cannot do.
For example, all are assigned to a “satellite city” where social
services may be available to them.[144]They must sign in at
the “foreigners” desk of their local police station once or several
times a week.[145]

Turkish law requires that all refugees and asylum seekers
pay fees for residency, which were 441 Turkish lira (US$241) for adults
and TL 288 (US$125) for children in 2010, and have to be renewed (and paid for
again) every six months.[146] They
have the right to apply for exemption of residency fees in accordance with article
88 of the Law on Collection of Fees (No. 492). The exemptions were not
consistently applied in the past. In March 2010, the Ministry of Interior
issued a circular advising local governors to use their authority to waive the
fees for asylum seekers and refugees who are unable to pay them, but there is
still confusion among refugees about their eligibility and the procedure for
the exemption.[147] Those
who have applied told Human Rights Watch that it is nearly impossible for them
to get the exemption. Most do not have the means to pay the residency fees.[148]
Without residency permits it is extremely difficult to gain access to health
care, education, social assistance, and employment. In general, refugees and
asylum seekers are responsible for their own expenses, including housing.

Turkish law also requires
refugees and asylum seekers with six-month residency permits to secure work
permits prior to gaining employment, but only allows these to be issued if no
Turkish national is qualified to perform the job. These administrative burdens,
along with the high cost of residency fees, mean that most refugees cannot
secure work permits and therefore work illegally in order to survive, making many
vulnerable to exploitation by their Turkish employers.[149]

In addition to the administrative and regulatory barriers
that provide challenges to refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey, the biggest
complaint registered by Iranian refugees and asylum seekers is the significant
wait times associated with RSDs and resettlement.[150]
UNHCR officials told Human Rights Watch that in the past year wait times for
processing of RSDs have significantly increased. According to officials in
2010-11 UNHCR Turkey was, on average, able to conduct RSDs within two to three
months of registration and provide a decision within eight months. In 2011-12,
however, the average wait time for an initial interview has increased to 12-13
months. The sharp increase in delay times is attributable to a 75 percent overall
increase in all applications lodged with UNHCR Turkey in the past year.[151]

Iraq (Iraqi
Kurdistan)

Iraq is not a signatory to the
1951 Refugee Convention and UNHCR is the primary party responsible for
processing and managing asylum claims in Iraq and areas in Iraqi Kurdistan[152]
managed by the Kurdish Regional Government.[153] The
majority of Iranian refugees who have registered with UNHCR’s offices in
Iraq have done so in Iraqi Kurdistan, under the authority of the KRG. As of
October 2012, there were approximately 9,636 “people of concern” in
Iraqi Kurdistan, according to UNHCR.[154] Most
of these refugees and asylum seekers are ethnic Kurds, many of whom were
recognized as prima facie refugees and have been in Iraq since the 1980s.

An official in the UNHCR office in Erbil told Human Rights
Watch that the office prioritized for resettlement to third countries those Iranians
who were in danger or had other security issues. She said that resettlement
countries, especially in Europe, showed little interest in admitting Iranian
Kurds. She cited several reasons for their attitudes, including a concern
regarding integration into European communities, a belief that at least some
Iranian Kurds had been in Iraqi Kurdistan for years and were well-integrated
there, and a general belief that areas controlled by the KRG were safe and that
asylum seekers have decent access to basic services.[155]
This is especially true for the thousands of Iranian Kurds who have lived as
refugees in Iraq since the 1980s and who have neither been resettled in third
countries nor gained full legal status as naturalized Iraqi citizens.[156]

The difficulties cited
above relate to a general perception by many Iranian Kurdish refugees and asylum
seekers that UNHCR is inactive or passive when it comes to resettlement of
refugees abroad. One Iranian Kurdish refugee voiced a common complaint when he told
Human Rights Watch that he believed UNHCR “feels no sense of
responsibility [in Iraqi Kurdistan] because they believe the area is secure and
there are opportunities for refugees who come here.”[157] He said many Iranian refugees who come to
Iraqi Kurdistan have chosen to move clandestinely to Europe instead of waiting
for UNHCR to accept them as refugees and resettle them because “very
few” cases had been accepted for resettlement.[158]

Thirty-six Iranian refugees have been resettled from Iraq in
the last five years, according to UNHCR’s own figures. UNHCR Iraq informed
Human Rights Watch that in the recent past it lacked capacity to process RSDs
in a timely manner, and said wait times varied between six months to one year.
More recently, however, UNHCR Iraq has increased its RSD capacity and wait
times have been reduced to one to three months for newly registered asylum
seekers.[159] UNHCR’s
statistics indicate that around 500 asylum seekers have registered with UNHCR
in Iraqi Kurdistan since 2007, and that as of October 2012 the office receives
an average of nine to ten Iranian asylum seekers per week.[160]

UNHCR officials generally
have a positive view regarding their working relationship with the KRG, and the
government’s treatment of Iranian refugees and asylum seekers. A UNHCR
official told Human Rights Watch that they were not aware of any deportations
or threats made against Iranian asylum seekers or refugees in KRG, but could
not state definitively that this was always the case.[161] Another UNHCR official informed Human Rights
Watch that on occasion Iranian asylum seekers have been threatened with
deportations if they were found to have “security concerns,” but
that UNHCR had intervened in such cases and no one had, in the past five years,
been deported to Iran for this reason.[162]

A KRG official echoed
UNHCR’s sentiments.[163] But several asylum seekers who spoke to Human
Rights Watch alleged they had been warned by KRG security and intelligence
officers to refrain from openly criticizing the Iranian government or cease
their activities altogether.

An Iranian asylum-seeker who wished to remain anonymous told
Human Rights Watch that authorities at the KRG residency office and the Asayish
repeatedly warned him to refrain from human rights activities that criticized
the Iranian government.[164] He
said authorities monitored him and interrogated him about his activities on
several occasions. One officer, he said, made it clear that even if an Iranian
refugee’s safety is at issue the KRG “will not sacrifice its
relations with the Iranians.”[165] Another
recounted similar threats by KRG officials because of his human rights
activities.[166]

Most asylum seekers interviewed by Human Rights Watch who
complained about threats from KRG authorities to cease their human rights or
political activities said they also encountered problems with their residency
status or freedom of movement in Iraqi Kurdistan. According to the UNHCR
official in Erbil, when refugees first enter Iraqi Kurdistan they are required
to register with UNHCR and get a letter from UNHCR attesting to their having
lodged a claim. They then must present that letter to the local police to
obtain a 10-day residency permit. They then need to go to the KRG Directorate
of Residency for an interview, and if they receive security clearance they get
a residency permit that they need to renew every six months. If there are
problems with the security clearance they receive a permit which needs to be
renewed every month. The official told Human Rights Watch that a UNHCR
registration card should, in general, qualify the refugee for a six month
residency card provided he or she gets KRG security clearance.[167]

Human Rights Watch spoke with several Iranian refugees who said
they had run into residency problems with the KRG’s security forces and
with officials at the Residency Directorate. The vast majority of Iranian
refugees Human Rights Watch interviewed in Iraqi Kurdistan said that KRG
authorities encourage Iranian asylum seekers to get letters of support from
exile Iranian opposition groups operating in Iraqi Kurdistan, or from Iraqi
Kurdish political parties such as Jalal Talebani’s Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan or Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party.[168]
Many civil society activists were uncomfortable doing this because they did not
want to be affiliated with any political parties.

Another Iranian Kurdish refugee, said there was lots of pressure
from KRG officials to get support from political groups in order to live and
continue his political activities:

We are tortured [in Iran] to prove our membership [with
opposition groups], but here we have to become members in order to stay. They
push us into this. This endangers [the work of] human rights activists.[169]

Several Iranian asylum seekers in Iraqi Kurdistan told Human
Rights Watch that it is difficult to acquire a temporary resident permit from
KRG authorities if they refuse to receive sponsorship from these groups.[170]
In the absence of such sponsorship authorities will sometimes only grant
temporary work permits even to those who have registered as asylum seekers with
UNHCR. The temporary work permits are usually good for six months and must be
renewed thereafter. An asylum seeker who refused sponsorship from KRG groups
told Human Rights Watch that when he went to renew his work permit with the KRG
authorities in May 2012 they told him he is essentially a migrant worker in
Iraqi Kurdistan and should not engage in political activity.[171]

UNHCR staff said they were aware of these additional
requirements placed on Iranian refugees by KRG authorities, especially for
non-Kurdish Iranian s, and that they were willing to intervene on behalf of
Iranians who could not or did not want to get letters of support from Iranian
opposition parties to ensure they have no problems with their residency status.[172]
But such intervention has not always worked. One Iranian refugee told Human
Rights Watch that when he was told by KRG officials to get a letter of support from an Iranian opposition group he went to UNHCR:

UNHCR sent a lawyer with me to the residency office. At
first it was OK but then after a while I started having problems because they
wanted me to get a letter of support when I was in Sulaimaniya. In fact the Asayish
said I must get residency in Sulaimaniya and that the letter I’d received
in Erbil does not count. I have not been able to get residency even though
I’ve gone more than 20 times now.[173]

Another Iranian refugee told Human Rights Watch that,
because of his participation in several demonstrations against both KRG authorities
and the Iranian government, authorities have refused to renew his residency
permit. He also said authorities had summoned him in for questioning several
times and informed him that he is deportable despite the fact that he is a
registered asylum-seeker with UNHCR.[174]

Iranian refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan also complained about a
sense of insecurity during their time in Iraq due to harassment or intimidation
by Iranian security and intelligence officials against their families back in
Iran. One Iranian refugee who currently lives in Erbil told Human Rights Watch
that Iranian security officials harassed his sister and family members after
they found out he had left the country and sought refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. He
said that until a few months ago, one of his interrogators in Iran, a man he
knew as “Ghaffari,” would send him text messages and e-mails claiming
he knew where he lived. Ghaffari often relayed messages through his relatives
back in Iran suggesting that Iranian security forces could kidnap him and take
him back to Iran easily.[175] Another
refugee told Human Rights Watch in November 2011 that during the past year he
has received several calls on his mobile phone from individuals who have
threatened him.[176]

Another refugee told Human Rights Watch that although his
situation in Iraqi Kurdistan is difficult he continues documenting and
reporting rights violations in Iran. After his July 22, 2011 interview with the
British newspaper TheGuardian, in which Rahmani commented on the
large number of individuals awaiting execution in Dizel Abad prison in Kermanshah,
Iranian authorities threatened his family in Iran in order to pressure him to
stop speaking about rights abuses taking place in the country, he told Human
Rights Watch.[177]

Many refugees expressed the fear that Iranian security and
intelligence forces were able to operate freely in Iraqi Kurdistan. Several
told Human Rights Watch that Iran maintains intelligence-gathering outposts, kargah-e
ramezan, in several cities and towns in Iraqi Kurdistan.[178]
These offices, they said, have been used for different purposes in the past,
including issuing permits to visit Iran and gathering intelligence on Iraqi
Kurdish parties as well as Iranian opposition figures. Human Rights Watch
has not been able to independently verify that Iranian agents threaten or
target Iranian refugees or asylum seekers in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by Faraz Sanei,
researcher for the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division, Bill
Frelick, director of the refugee policy program edited this report. Emma
Sinclair-Webb, senior research with the Europe and Central Asia division and
Mariwan R. Hama, Koenig Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa division,
provided additional editing assistance. Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor at
Human Rights Watch, and Tom Porteous, deputy program director, reviewed this
report. Jillian Slutzker, associate in the Middle East and North Africa
division, provided production assistance. Publications Director Grace Choi, Publications
Specialist Kathy Mills, Creative Manager Anna Lopriore, and Administrative
Manager Fitzroy Hepkins prepared the report for publication.

Human Rights Watch would also like to UNHCR Turkey and Iraq for
reviewing drafts of this report, and the dozens of Iranians who agreed to share
their stories and experiences for this report.

[6] By-laws for the Establishment and Activities of Non-Governmental
Organizations, ratified July 19, 2005, art.
138. The ministry cited Article 138 of the constitution,
which grants “Council of Ministers or a singleminister” the
authority to “to frame procedures for the implementation of laws.”

[13]Iran constitution, art. 26, http://www.icnl.org/research/journal/vol7iss4/special_2.htm#_ednref8. Guarantees the right to form “parties, societies, political
or professional associations, as well as religious societies, whether Islamic
or pertaining to one of the recognized religious minorities.”
Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, adopted October 23, 1979, amended
July 28, 1989, art. 26

[18]Ibid., 9-10. In 2000, for example,
Khamenei sent a letter to Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, to halt the
consideration and eventual passage of an amended press law that would remove
burdensome restrictions on free speech. The Majlis, which was under the control
of the reformists, caved in despite arguments by reformist lawmakers that
Khamenei’s intervention violated Iran’s constitution. Several other
bills introduced by reformists intended to simultaneously enhance presidential
powers while limiting those of the unelected Guardian Council, were rejected by
that body. Khatami and his allies in the Majlis were eventually forced to
withdraw them from consideration.Ibid.

[22]Human Rights Watch, Iran - Ministers
of Murder: Iran’s New Security Cabinet, Dec 15, 2005, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/mena/iran1205/iran1205.pdf.
Two prominent cabinet members were Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and Mostafa PourMohammadi. Ejei, who became Ahmadinejad’s Minister of
Intelligence has been a leading figure in prosecuting reformist clerics and
politicians, as well as suppressing press freedoms, in his various capacities
with the Judiciary. In January 1999, he signaled the judiciary’s
offensive against the press that has since resulted in the closure of more than
100 newspapers. Mustafa PourMohammadi, who became
Ahmadinejad’s Minister of Interior in 2005 represented the Ministry of
Information on a three-person committee in 1988 that ordered the execution of
thousands of political prisoners. These systematic killings constitute a crime
against humanity under international human rights law. In his role as a deputy
and designated acting minister of information in 1998, PourMohammadi is also suspected of ordering the murders of several
dissident writers and intellectuals by agents of the Ministry ofIntelligence. While PourMohammadi headed the foreign
intelligence section of the Ministry of Information, government agents carried
out assassinations of numerous opposition figures abroad.

[23]Human Rights Watch, Iran - Freedom of Expression and Association
in the Kurdish Regions, Jan 9, 2009.http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iran0109_web.pdf,
19; See also, By-laws for the Establishment and Activities of
Non-Governmental Organization, ratified on July 19, 2005, article 1. It
should be noted that due to the restrictive NGO registration regulations in
Iran some civil society groups and NGOs did not operate with valid permits from
the authorities. For example, Sadigh
Kaboudvand did not apply for a permit when he established his Organization for
the Defense of Human Rights in Kurdistan. The same is true for Shirin
Ebadi’s Center for Human Rights Defenders, who has previously
acknowledged that she did not apply for a permit because she did not believe it
was legally necessary, and believed the authorities would, in any case, reject
the application or fail to respond.

[26]Political
parties, trade unions and bar associations are regulated by different
laws in Iran.

[27]“Iran: Parliament
Ignores Concerns of Independent Civil Society Organisations Over Draft
Bill,” Human Rights Watch joint statement, April, 10, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/04/10/iran-parliament-ignores-concerns-independent-civil-society-organisations-over-draft-. Other articles of the bill would prohibit all contact with international
organizations without prior permission, including membership in international
organizations, participating in training sessions or meetings abroad, signing
contracts or memoranda of understanding and receiving funds or other aid from
international organizations. Another would requires all current NGOs and
associations to reapply for official registration within six months or face
becoming illegal.

[30]Human Rights Watch, Iran –
Islamic Republic at 31, February 12, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2010/02/11/islamic-republic-31-0. Another three protesters were killed during clashes between
demonstrators and armed security forces in February 2011, after opposition
leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi called for protests in support
of popular uprisings in the Arab world and Iran’s Green Movement;
“Iran: End Violence Against Protesters,” Human Rights Watch news
release, March 3, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/03/iran-end-violence-against-protesters-0. In fact the Center was operating with a proper permit from the
relevant authorities. CDHR requested a permit from the authorities in February
2004 during former president Khatami’s term. In September 2006, the
Ministry of the Interior announced that the authorities had approved the
request but never issued a permit to the Center. Despite this, Ebadi and her
colleagues continued their activities at the Center until security forces
raided and sealed the office. See Open Letter of Shirin Ebadi to President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, June 7, 2009, available at http://www.humanrights-ir.org/php/view_en.php?objnr=284.

[48] By-laws for the Establishment and Activities of Non-Governmental
Organization, ratified on July 19, 2005, art. 1. For
the cases of other NGOs covered in this report, the circumstances have varied.
Sadegh Kaboudvand did not apply for a permit when he established his
Organization for the Defense of Human Rights in Kurdistan. Bahram Valad-Beigi
initially succeeded in obtaining a permit for the Cultural Institute of
Kurdistan but later faced problems. Student activist Souren Hosseini never
received a response from the authorities about his application to form a
student organization.

[68]
UN Human Rights Council, “Report of Special Rapporteur
on Iran,” A/HRC/19/66, March
7, 2012, http://persian.iranhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/HRC-ICHRI_en.pdf,
17. On
March 7, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed,
released his second report documenting rights violations in the country. The
report, which followed an interim report he submitted on September 23, 2011,
documented a “striking pattern of violations” committed by Iranian
authorities and outlined the government’s continuing refusal to cooperate
with UN bodies. The position of special rapporteur on Iran was created after
the Human Rights Council voted for a country mandate on Iran during its March
2011 session.

[73]According to article 513 of Iran’s penal code insults
to the Abrahamic prophets (including Moses, Jesus and Muhammad), the twelve
Imams recognized by adherents of the Jafari school of Islam, and the
prophet’s daughter (and Imam Ali’s wife) Fatemeh result in one to
five years imprisonment or death (if it involves insults to the prophet Muhammad).

[88]Human Rights Watch has reviewed a copy of Soltani’s
conviction and sentencing documents. The Islamic Penal Code in Iran allows
judges to sentence individuals charged with particular crimes, such as moharebeh
or “enmity against God,” to internal exile which requires them to
serve a part or all of their prison sentences in far-flung cities and
provinces. See Islamic Penal Code, art. 190.

[96] Amir-Hossein Mirabian, Bigdelifard’s brother-in-law told
Human Rights Watch that after he and his sister found out that Bigdelifard had
been caught by security forces, they went into hiding. They stayed in Tehran
for several days and then headed north to a city along the Caspian Sea. They
spent the next eight months or so in hiding. Mirabian says that during this
time, his parents were under pressure by government authorities who were after
them. Bigdelifard was eventually released from detention and joined Mirabian
and his sister in northern Iran before all three of them fled the country to
Turkey. Mirabian told Human Rights Watch that Bigdelifard endured severe
harassment, abuse, and torture at the hands of
security forces during his month-long stay in a secret detention facility.
Human Rights Watch interview with Mohammad-Reza
Bigdelifard, Nigde, Turkey,
April 5, 2010.

[98] This phrase was a sarcastic response to an earlier speech made by
President Ahmadinejad in which he dismissed the demonstrations against him and
referred to the protesters as “dust and trash” left over after a
football match.

[111]PJAK, or the Kurdish Party for Free Life of Kurdistan, is
an armed group associated with the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) which operates
primarily in Turkey. PJAK and PKK both openly admit to multiple guerrilla
attacks against Turkish or Iranian soldiers in a self-proclaimed struggle for
ethnic equality for Kurds in those countries. “Iraqi Kurdistan: Cross
Border Attacks Should Spare Iraqi Civilians,” Human Rights Watch news
release, September 2, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/02/iraqi-kurdistan-cross-border-attacks-should-spare-iraqi-civilians.

[125] With regard to education, the directive noted that Bahai’s
"must be expelled from universities, either in the admission process or
during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are
Bahai’s.” The directive remains in effect. Faraz Sanei
(Human Rights Watch), “Barring the Bahai’is”, commentary, Independent World Report, April 13, 2010,http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/04/13/barring-bahais; see also “Iran: Allow Baha’i Students Access to
Higher Education,” http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/04/13/barring-bahais ,
September 19, 2007,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/19/iran-allow-baha-i-students-access-higher-education.

[127]Iranian security forces also targeted
Goli’s brothers, Amar and Amer. In November 2009, security forces
arrested Amer Goli and subjected him to torture, including beatings and
lashings for his involvement in demonstrations protesting the execution of
Kurdish political dissidents. He was detained in Sanandaj prison for a period
of one month and given a six-month sentence. Amar was
continuously harassed and monitored by security forces for his role in
publicizing various human rights issues in Iranian Kurdistan. Amar and Amer
Goli were eventually expelled from their respective universities prior to
fleeing Iran with their family in March 2010.

[128]Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Yaser Goli, May 24, 2010 and interview with Yaser Goli and his family, Sulaimaniya, Iraq, October 2011.

[129] Yaser Goli’s family, all of whom are activists, have also
been the target of abuse and harassment by the Iranian government. Saleh Goli,
Mr. Goli’s father, has similarly been targeted by the Iranian government.
On October 31, 2007, Mr. Goli’s father was arrested and detained by
Ministry of Intelligence agents after he complained about his son’s
arrest and provided several interviews with foreign media outlets. He was
charged with acting against the national security. A court in Sanandaj gave him
a six-month suspended sentence, but he was later
acquitted by an appellate court. Saleh Goli still faces additional national
security related charges (in relation to complaints against his son’s
arrest and detention) for which he has not been tried. He left Iran along with
his family in March 2010. Saleh Goli was previously arrested in 1999 for his
role in organizing protests against the government in Sanandaj, but he was
eventually acquitted and released.

[137]Ibid. Olyaeifard is also facing the charge of membership in
HRA which is considered an unlawful organization by the authorities.

[138]UNHCR, Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries,
2011, http://www.unhcr.org/4e9beaa19.html. These figures do not encompass
worldwide numbers as there were several notable countries, such as Malaysia,
which were not included. Others cite the worldwide figure for applications in
2009 and 2010 at 15,890 and 19,004 respectively. Iranian Refugees’
Alliance, Inc., Statistical Data on Iranian Refugees and Asylum Seekers (Last
Updated July 2011), http://www.irainc.org/iranref/statistics.php.

[139]According
to UNHCR Iraq, at least “500 asylum seekers were registered with UNHCR
since 2007” and “UNHCR [currently] receives
an average of 9 to 10 Iranian asylum seekers weekly.” Email
correspondence with UNHCR Iraq, October 2, 2012.

[140] Human Rights Watch interview with UNHCR, Ankara, Turkey, May 10, 2012. In 2012 the United States set aside 5,000
slots for resettlement, with a preference for Iranians and Iraqi refugees.
According to UNHCR Ankara, however, new regulations requiring additional
security checks by the Department of Homeland Security have caused serious
delays of up to oneand
ahalf
years for refugees seeking resettlement in the US. According to the same
office, Canada has increased its overall capacity for resettlement of refugees
to 900 per year (up from 600 last year). Australia had increased its capacity
to 400 slots this year. According to UNHCR Ankara, Australia also had a special
fast-track program that allotted 200 spots for individuals with families in
Australia. In 2012, Norway had 1,200 resettlement
spots for refugees worldwide, including 150 dedicated spots for Iranians in
Turkey (and 100 slots for Afghans refugees from Iran). Finland has also been
accepted 150 refugees (Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans) from Turkey, according to
UNHCR Ankara.

[141]Human Rights Watch interview with UNHCR, Ankara,
Turkey, May 10, 2012. This included 2,773 asylum
seekers (11%) and 2,963 refugees (11%). According to UNHCR the prospects for
third-country resettlement for Iranian refugees is generally good.

[142]The Turkish government has always had the authority to make
refugee status determinations independent of UNHCR, but in practice they have
usually deferred to the decisions of UNHCR.

[143] UNHCR officials told Human Rights Watch that they were not aware
of any refoulement cases against Iranians “in recent years,” and Human Rights Watch did not document any such cases
during its investigation. They also highlighted the fact that even if an asylumseeker’s application is rejected
they can first appeal the decision to Turkish authorities and UNHCR, and then
lodge a further appeal with administrative courts in Turkey. Article 3 of the
European Court for Human Rights provides rejected asylum seekers with a final
legal opportunity to challenge their ultimate deportation if they risk being
subject to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. Human Rights Watch interview
with UNHCR,Ankara, Turkey, May 10, 2012.

[144] As of this writing, there were more than 51 designated satellite
cities, mostly in the interior of the country. See United States Committee for
Refugees and Immigrants, “World Refugee Survey 2008 - Turkey,” June
19, 2008 in UNHCR Refworld, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/485f50d776.html
(accessed October 15, 2008).

[145] Refugees and asylums seekers may apply for permission to
temporarily leave their satellite city, but the decision rests withlocal police officials.

[146]UNHCR in Turkey: Facts and Figures, August 2010,
Issue 2, at pg. 15.

[148] Refugees and asylum seekers who have
not paid their residency fees may be required to do so before being allowed to
leave Turkey and resettle in a third country. Human Rights Watch interviewed
several Iranian refugees who were not able to pay their residency fees and
whose exit from Turkey (usually for resettlement in a third country) was either
delayed or prevented. According to UNHCR Ankara, a circular issued by the
Turkish government in 2010 states that authorities are not allowed to prevent
refugees from leaving Turkey because of their failure to pay back fees. They
acknowledged, however, that there needs to be better advertisement of the
exemption mechanism in place for individuals who cannot afford to pay their
residency fees and more effective application of a zero tolerance policy on
preventing refugees from exiting Turkey if they have failed to pay their
residency fees. Draft legislation introduced in the Turkish parliament in April
2012 would effectively waive all requirements for refugees and asylum seekers
to pay for their residency fees, and would improve their right to access health
services, education, and other services. Human Rights Watch interview with
UNHCR, Ankara, Turkey, February 2011.

[149]According to UNHCR the Turkish Ministry of Interior has
recently initiated a small pilot program in one satellite city to provide a
limited number of refugees and asylum seekers with work permits. Human Rights
Watch interview with UNHCR, Ankara (Turkey), February 2011.

[150]Unlike asylum seekers who are accorded a certain set of
protections under the 1951 refugee convention, refugees do not have a right to
resettlement in a third country.

[151]Human Rights Watch interview with UNHCR, Ankara,
Turkey. May 10, 2012. UNHCR officials told Human
Rights Watch that the increase is partially attributable to the ongoing crisis in Syria, a 117 percent increase in applications by Iraqi asylum seekers in Turkey, and a
100% increase in applications by Afghan asylumseekers in Turkey. They said they are now experiencing a
serious capacity shortfall and are in desperate need of more funding if they
are to significantly cut down processing time.

[152] See footnote 58 for a
description of use of the terms “Iraqi Kurdistan” and Kurdish
Regional Government in this report, 2012).

[155] Human Rights Watch interview with UNHCR, Erbil, Iraq, November 7, 2011. According to UNHCR’s own figures,
there are approximately 7,000 Iranian Kurdish refugees, mostly in Iraqi
Kurdistan, who are currently receiving assistance from UNHCR in Iraq. The majority
of them left Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and reside in refugee
camps.

[156]Human Rights Watch spoke to several Iranian Kurdish
refugees at Barika camp located outside Sulaimaniya on November 11, 2011. The
camp houses approximately 1,900 refugees, most of whom left Iran in the 1980s.
The residents receive housing, health, employment and educational assistance
from UNHCR but complain that the services are not adequate. Although several
dozen had managed to repatriate back to Iran during the past few decades most
told Human Rights Watch they wished to either resettle in or gain full
citizenship rights in Iraq. KRG authorities maintain, however, that although
they would like to grant some of these Iranian refugees full-fledged
citizenship rights they are powerless to do so because they do not have such
authority under the new Iraqi constitution. Human Rights Watch interview with
Dindar Zebari (assistant foreign relations director for UN affairs and
international organizations), New York, March 1, 2012.

[163]Human Rights Watch meeting with Dindar Zebari (Assistant
Head of Department of Foreign Relations for International Organizations), New
York, NY, March 1, 2012.

[164]Asayish is the primary
security and intelligence agency controlled by Kurdish Regional Government
authorities.

[165]Human Rights Watch phone interview May 19, 2012. Human Rights Watch also spoke to a handful of Iranian
Kurdish refugees who said they had participated in demonstrations. One told
Human Right Watch that KRG security forces dispersed and beat Iranian activists
who had gathered in front of the Iranian consulate to protest the Iranian
government’s human rights record in 2011. Another said authorities prevented
a gathering inside Sulaimaniya by Iranian activist on May 19, 2011 to mark the
one year anniversary of the death of Farzad Kamangar, a Kurdish activist and
teacher who was executed by Iranian authorities along with four other political
dissidents. They did, however, allow a ceremony to take place in the outskirts
of town; See also “Iran: Executed Dissidents ‘Tortured’ to
Confess,” Human Rights Watch news release May 11, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/05/11/iran-executed-dissidents-tortured-confess.

[168]The two main Iranian dissident groups operating openly in
Iraqi Kurdistan are Komala and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran. These
parties have several political offices and bases with peshmerga fighters
throughout territory controlled by the KRG, but agreed in the early 1990s to
cease armed activities against the Iranian government. Iranian authorities have
for years outlawed their activities inside the country. Human Rights Watch, Iran - Freedom of Expression and Association in the Kurdish
Regions, January 2009, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2009/01/08/iran-freedom-expression-and-association-kurdish-regions-0,
pg. 7.

[170]The process seems somewhat arbitrary, as Human Rights Watch
interviewed some asylum seekers who had refused sponsorship from political
parties but had managed to secure temporary residency permits.

Corrections

The December 2012 report contained the following errors with regard to the story of Fayegh Roorast, a Kurdish rights activist who was forced to leave Iran:

Pgs. 41-42, the sentence that previously read, “He said Ministry of Intelligence agents began targeting him around the time of Farzad Kamangar’s execution in May 2010” has been corrected to read, “He said Ministry of Intelligence agents began targeting him around the time when the judiciary sentenced Farzad Kamangar to death, in March 2008.”

On pg. 42, the following two sentences have been corrected: “On January 25, 2009, intelligence agents entered Roorast’s home in Mahabad and seized his personal belongings. Because Roorast was not there the agents arrested his father.” They instead read, “On January 25, 2009 intelligence agents attacked Roorast’s father’s shop and arrested his father. A little while later they entered Roorast’s home in Mahabad and seized his personal belongings, but did not arrest him at that time.”

On pg. 43, the two following sentences have been corrected: “Authorities released him on bail during the winter of 2009. He left Iran for Iraqi Kurdistan.” The text now reads, “Authorities released him in early 2010. He left Iran for Iraqi Kurdistan later that summer.”